Dean Buntrock

Born in Columbia, South Dakota, on June 6, 1931, Buntrock began learning about business as a youngster working for his father, Rudy Buntrock, a community leader who owned a farm services business that included International Harvester farm equipment, tractors and trucks, along with Standard Oil products, hardware and other farming-related needs. He was mayor of the 250-resident town for 25 years, a main customer of the local bank as well as a member of its board, and owner of a local baseball club.[2] He led campaigns to build the local gym and fund War Bonds. Rudy's businesses, banking background and his ability to work with local farmers who purchased agricultural equipment taught Dean valuable lessons about how to purchase and finance equipment, which later proved to be very important during his early years in business. Guided by his father and mother, Lillian (née Hustad), Dean at an early age displayed signs of entrepreneurial acumen, raising chickens and growing potatoes which he sold to local restaurants in the Aberdeen area about 20 miles away. At age 14, he drove a truck hauling grain during harvest for the area's largest farmer and at 16 became a salesman for his father's business.[3]

Buntrock's early education was based on the Midwest Christian values that were the backbone of his mother's Norwegian and father's German heritage. He was raised a Lutheran. “The values that were most important to my parents were tithing, saving, respect and using all your God-given talents to pursue excellence,” Buntrock said. He attended the one-room St. John's Lutheran School from grades five through eight. It was across the street from the home he shared with his parents and younger siblings, a brother, Clayton, and a sister, Joyce. “If you were a Lutheran, that’s where you went,” he said.[2] The school had 30 students; his high school class would have just eight graduates. His education continued at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he majored in business and history. He returned home in his junior year to help with the family business when his father developed heart disease. After completing service during the Korean War, which included attending finance school at Fort Benjamin Harrison, he returned to St. Olaf to complete his college studies in 1955.[3]

Two days after graduation, Buntrock married Elizabeth (Betty) Joanne (“B.J.”) Huizenga, also a student at St. Olaf. The couple set off to Boulder, Colorado, where Dean became a successful if short-lived life insurance salesman for the Equitable Life Assurance Society of New York earning commissions on life-insured home refinancings.[2] B.J.’s father, Peter, was the son of Harm Huizenga, a Dutch immigrant who arrived in Chicago at the time of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. He owned a modest business at the beginning driving a horse and wagon full of trash for $1.25 a load.[2] Harm and many other men of Dutch descent in Chicago – the names included Evenhouse, Groot, Boersma, DeBoer and others – would expand their businesses as the city grew. The work was hard and few lived long lives. Harm’s sons, Siert (Sam), Tom and Peter, followed their father's lead and built their own trash hauling businesses.[4] Tom died in 1945 and Sam died in 1953.[4] Peter died in September 1956 after suffering a heart attack.[2] At this time, the business was known as the Ace Scavenger Service – a conglomeration of trash hauling companies owned in partnership with the Huizenga widows. On Peter's death, Buntrock returned to Chicago to care for his mother-in-law's interest in the Ace business. He came on as the manager with no stake in the business. Then in early 1957, only four months after his arrival, Lawry Groot, a partner who persuaded Dean to join the business, also died of a heart attack. That left the young Buntrock in charge. According to Timothy Jacobson’s history of the company, “Waste Management, A Corporate American Success Story,” Ace had just 15 collection routes, each with revenues of $4,000 a month, and an interest in a waste incinerator called Incinerator Inc. Buntrock brought home $200 a week.[2]

Buntrock and other Chicago haulers understood the value of having a local trade organization. First called the Chicago and Suburban Ash and Scavenger Association, the group evolved to become the Chicago and Suburban Refuse Disposal Association.[4] It gave the haulers an industry voice and means to communicate with local governments from which they sought collection contracts. Buntrock further recognized the need for a national association. He emerged as the leader of the National Council of Refuse Disposal Trade Associations, founded in 1962. Buntrock, Harold Vandermolen, another Chicagoan, and Marshall Rabins from California each contributed $5,000 to engage a lawyer to incorporate the small group. Buntrock was its first president. His plan brought together entrepreneurs in waste management into an association that had size, experience and the know-how to play a role in developing new waste practices and introducing new waste management technologies. The association focused on recruiting new members and began monitoring developments in labor law, public health and trade practices. As it began to reach out to federal government agencies, its leaders recognized they needed a more formally organized national voice. Buntrock hired a small Washington public relations firm, Larry Hogan Associates, to manage the group. Harold Gershowitz, a partner in the firm, became the association's first executive director.[2] In 1968, the association was renamed the National Solid Wastes Management Association.[2] Founder Buntrock served as its president through the mid-1960s and remained a director for nearly 20 years.[9]

Buntrock has been a generous benefactor for numerous institutions, including his alma mater St. Olaf College, the Lutheran Church in America, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, numerous arts organizations, and to conservation and environmental groups such as Ducks Unlimited and the National Wildlife Federation, the last of which he served as a director.[3] In 1996 he contributed $26 million to St. Olaf College,[10] the largest single gift donated to the school or any other Lutheran college in the United States. The money was the lead gift to build a new student center which opened on November 5, 1999. Named the Buntrock Commons in honor of Buntrock and his family, the building is a community center housing services to support student academic and social lives. Buntrock served as chair of the St. Olaf Board of Regents from 1986 to 1995.[11] In 2018 Buntrock contributed $21.4 million to Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, the largest single gift in its history.[12] The gift funded a pilot program designed to allow the seminary to educate and train students in two years, instead of the four years typically needed for a master's degree in divinity. The gift was to reduce the cost to students and lower college debt, which has been a detriment to seminary school enrollment. Buntrock philanthropy has supported numerous Chicago civic and cultural institutions. A life trustee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Buntrock funded the development of the CSO's Symphony Center, a multi-use facility used for rehearsals by the Chicago Symphony Chorus and Civic Orchestra of Chicago. The facility is used for chamber performances, dinners, receptions, lectures, trade shows and meetings.[13][14] He was a founding board member and contributor to Chicago's Millennium Park.[15] He served as a member of the Terra Foundation for American Art board and played a key role in filing a lawsuit with other board members that resulted in keeping the Terra Museum in Chicago.[16] Buntrock has supported a range of health institutions, including Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, the Lurie Children's Hospital and the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California.

Buntrock has three daughters from his marriage to B.J. Huizenga and six granddaughters. The marriage to Huizenga, who died in 2014,[17] ended in divorce. In 1984, Buntrock married Rosemarie Nuzzo.

Buntrock is a 1996 recipient of the Horatio Alger Award.[18] The award recognizes “contemporary role models whose experiences exemplify that opportunities for a successful life are available to all individuals who are dedicated to the principles of integrity, hard work, perseverance and compassion for others.” Buntrock was a 1992 inductee into the Sales & Marketing Executives International Academy of Achievement, established to recognize notable lifetime contributions to the free enterprise system through personal and corporate success in sales and marketing.[19] In 1997, he was named outstanding chief executive in the pollution control industry by Financial World and The Wall Street Transcript.[20] He is a 2007 inductee into the National Solid Wastes Management Association Hall of Fame.[9]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in August 2005 announced that it had reached a settlement with Mr. Buntrock and three other former Waste Management executives that resolved a civil complaint the SEC issued in 2002. The complaint alleged inappropriate accounting treatment of company financial statements that resulted in overstating the company's profits during a five-year period in the mid-1990s. Mr. Buntrock and the former executives admitted to no wrongdoing and agreed to a range of financial and other penalties to resolve the matter.[21]