Sent to Steve Booher at St. Joseph News Press

Dear Steve:

I read your comments about the D&G in the St. Joseph News-Press with great interest. My Dad and Uncle started the D&G late in World War II, and it was truly a family business--my Aunt worked there early on, and my Mom was fully engaged in the busines . I have been lucky enough to have a great career, but nothing has ever pleased me more than having the Rachel sandwich named after me.

I have lived in New York for decades. I used to work on Wall Street and I went to Harvard Business School. In some ways, that means I have had a front row seat on what went wrong with the American Economy.

I know how easy it is to think you "deserve" a huge salary, or to ride on a private plane, or to make balance sheet decisions overwhelmingly in management's favor, especially if you do it in a way that is hard for others to find. I also know how hard it can be to try to hang onto real values, when the world seems to be going another way.

The D&G wasn't perfect, but it was part of a community that helped everybody stay a little more sane about what truly matters. I started a new business about a year ago, and I realized that my goal was to build something that was as solid at its core as the D&G and that could last as long as it did.

My opinion is that if all the CEOs on Wall Street had to work for a year in the D&G the way my family did, and the Miners did, trying to make every penny stretch while personally setting a standard of hard work for others to follow, our economy would snap back faster than under any government stimulus plan.

With my best regards,

Ronna Glaser Lichtenberg