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Mark Balsan said he has two older and one younger siblings. He grew up in a two-story home in southwest Chicago. He played soccer but his primary sport was baseball. He studied business management at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He and his wife are now expecting their second child in March. He works for his father-in-law, Erich Eggers and moved to the Dayton area to become part of the second generation in his father-in-law's business, Remodeling Design.
He noted that one thing people probably don't know about him is that he is one of the minority of people who don't like peanut butter. (So sad...comment from a PB lover), He said his father-in-law is "a good chef behind the scenes. He's a great supportive person," he said.

Centerville Rotary Club member Dan Sortman was recently interviewed at a club meeting so we could learn more about him. He is a 20-year member of the Centerville Rotary and is a past president, serving from 2003-4. His father was a Rotarian and he became a Rotarian because of a kind and generous act of a Rotarian, he said.
 
Dan related a family story he was told about how his grandmother was sitting on a park bench crying because her daughter was about to graduate from high school but needed one more operation that would allow her to walk. She did not have money for the last operation and was crying about that, he said. A man came up to her and asked her what she was crying so desperately about. When she told him about the needed operation, he said she did not need to worry about it, but that it would be all taken care of. The operation was successfully performed and his grandmother never received a bill for any of it, he said. She told him that the man who had talked to her was a doctor who worked at Children's Hospital and who also was a Rotarian. From that point on, he said, he was determined to become a Rotarian and follow it's motto of Service Above Self. He said he also enjoys the camaraderie.
 
Dan said he was born in Dayton, but that his parents moved in 1956 when he was one year old, to Centerville, on Davis Road, near the Routsong Funeral Home. He has six brothers and sisters, though the youngest died in a car accident when he was in high school.
 
Dan attended Centerville High School, and attended OSU where he received a degree in marketing in 1973. He started his career working at the Outdoor Sports headquarters, which sold hunting and fishing items. He was transferred to Illinois and covered all of Illinois outside Chicago, he said. Then he was transferred back to Ohio to train new sales reps.
His dad came to him and together they set up their own business selling industrial equipment, material handling equipment and overhead lifting equipment. After 10 years he bought out his dad, and he worked that for 28 years, he said.  
 
At the end of 2010 he had to close the plant when GM went out of the area, as GM had been a big buyer and user of their equipment. He went with another company, Powerbuilt Material Handling Solutions, LLC, which makes such things as digital control stations and radio remote controls for lifting, supplying to GM as well as Navistar and Honda, etc.
 
Dan said he has been married for 37 years. He and his wife have several grown children and he said his younger sister works with him out of his house. Dan's father, Don joined our club in the late 1970's, served as President in 1984-85, and remained a member until he passed in 2006. Centerville Rotary is truly ingrained in the Sortman family!
 
 
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