As ENR’s 53rd Award of Excellence winner Ron Klemencic tells it, he answered the phone on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2001, two days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and heard someone saying, “What are you going to do? This is Nadine Post from ENR. You’re the chairman of the tall buildings council. What are you going to do?”
One of my favorite moments of the ENR year is calling the Top 25 Newsmakers to the stage for a group photo after announcing publicly for the first time the individual selected as the Award of Excellence winner.
While hanging out with friends in his California living room one day in 2006, HT Tran had an epiphany that changed his career path and the direction of his life. The wounded Army veteran whose family fled Vietnam went on to start a fast-growing construction firm that's building San Francisco and careers for fellow veterans.
Earlier this year, when ENR Editor-at-Large Nadine M. Post was briefing the videographers on Award of Excellence winner Jeffrey M. Baker and his project, she described his accomplishment and its significance. But when asked, she couldn’t describe the man. That was because she had not yet met Baker.
When John Hillman’s cell phone rings, out comes the tune of “Tom Sawyer,” released by the rock band Rush in 1981. The song is not just a favorite of Hillman’s—it comes as close to summing up his philosophy and personality as any one song could.