Small Business Persons of the Year named

SPRINGFIELD, I’ll. – Recipients had everything from health-care reform to tree farms as economic diversification on their minds at the 25th annual Small Business Person of the Year luncheon Wednesday.

The crowd at the Crowne Plaza Hotel found local business owners of the opinion that the economy slowly has begun to recover from the worst recession in decades.

A particularly loud applause line was Don Herron’s contention that — tough as it’s been — Springfield has held up better than most.

“Springfield is a unique community. It’s very white-collar. We have a lot of medical, and we have a lot of government work,” says Herron, owner of Cajun Lawn Care, winner of the Ruby Award for businesses with annual sales up to $1 million.

Even so, Herron says some customers fell 30 to 80 days behind in paying their bills when the worst of the economic slump hit last fall.

“They’re all good people, and we understood that, and we never stopped mowing. You don’t kick a man when he’s down,” says Herron.

He added that demand for lawn care — closely tied to the housing market — has rebounded this spring.

HAD TO DIVERSIFY. Herron, who named his business after his roots in Louisiana, moved to Springfield 17 years ago to work with the Springfield Rifles baseball team. He also coached for several years at Southeast High School.

Herron said he and wife, Michele, started the business with a “push mower and a weed eater” in 2003. The company now has 12 full-time employees and mows approximately 110 acres a week.

Recently, a tree farm was added to help offset a slowdown in the lawn-care business.

“We diversified. When the economy started to turn down, we were concerned people wouldn’t need their lawn mowed. We thought people could always use trees and plants,” says Michele Herron.

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