Master entrepreneur: Eugene B. Glick.

• Author: Johnson, J. Douglas
• Position: Indiana's Entrepreneurs of the Year

MASTER ENTREPRENEUR

Fugene B. Glick

Eugene B. Glick Co., Inc.

Indianapolis

Have a cup of coffee in the Gene B. Glick Co., Inc., lunchroom and you'll see the sun glinting on 38 plaques and honors the boss has won. He shares them daily with employees who helped earn the accolades. Glick is a strong supporter of morale and loyalty. His first employee started as a part-time helper, worked for the same company all his life and retired as atop executive 35 years later. Other executives started in the 1950s or 60s and the few who were hired in the 70s are still considered the new kids on the block.

Glick himself has been in the housing business since 1945 when he was a loan officer with Indianapolis-based Peoples Bank & Trust Co. specializing in GI mortgage loans. With the bank's blessing, he began moonlighting as a home seller and with his wife, Marilyn, developed a unique proposition. They paid owners $100 to list homes with them and promised to buy the house if they had not sold it in 30 days. Says Glick: "We owned a few too many houses for a while there, but it worked out and we made money.

"Then one day," he recalls, "I smelled the odor of freshly turned earth for the foundation of a home I knew I wanted to be a builder and turn a piece of ground into a home." By 1949, he was into single-family home construction full-time. in 1961 and '62, his company built 1,111 homes on land he developed and set...