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Retirement is opportunity to look back

By Joseph Busler, Courier Post - South Jersey Business, June 12, 2005

This is goodbye.

After more than 35 ½ years at the Courier-Post, I am retiring. Officially, on Wednesday, my 62nd birthday, but effectively, Friday was my last day at work.

Since the end of 1991, I have been a business writer, but over my tenure here, I have played many roles, municipal reporter, urban affairs reporter, Camden City reporter and bureau chief investigative reporter and occasional editor.

I have had three stints as a columnist, the first, as the tagline, below has trumpeted weekly, began March 17, 1972. It was a feature column called Monday with Joseph Busler.

But a reporter's career is defined by the stories not the titles. Those stories are less about me than about South Jersey and some of its most significant events and people over 35 years.

In recent years, I have devoted much of my time to spotlighting South Jersey's remarkable entrepreneurs, extraordinary people who have built so much for so many from so little. It has been a privilege to know them and to write about them. To list just a few:

Ed DuCoin, founder of Impact Telemarketing at 18, an Internet business in his 30s and than a NASCAR racing team.

John Scardapane, creator of Saladworks.

Tina Wells, at 25 CEO of $3 million a year Buzz Marketing Group she started at 16.

Bob Leib, who started his own collection agency, sold it, then bought it back and began again.

Valerie Schlitt, who started a home-based marketing company friendly to mothers' schedules.

Carol Gersh, serial entrepreneur in the region's information technology sector and now a principal in BeSeen Communications.

Lou Caracciolo, master winemaker at his Amalthea Cellar in Atco but also a food scientist who invented an environment friendly way of sterilizing chicken carcasses.

Chris Miles of Miles Technologies. A computer geek with a background in the construction business and 100 percent an entrepreneur.

Chuck Grimley, whose Grimley Financial Services has been on more fastest-growing lists than you can count. And many more.

I will miss them all.

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