Most Interesting People 2017

By the Editors

What makes someone interesting?

If you ask us, it’s passion. Whether it’s passion for your profession, your interests or the community, passion requires hard work and dedication that’s above what’s required. When we selected the 2017 Most Interesting People, we looked for people who make us excited to live in the Tristate and for the region’s future because they’re using their passions to make it better. What do you know about this year’s group?

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Molly Wellmann Partner, Wellmann’s Brands

Molly Wellmann was born in the wrong decade. She muses that the 1870s might have been fun, or the 1950s. Known for her eclectic and often vintage style, this should come as no surprise.

Wellmann’s classic cocktails are a tribute to the past, and her love of history makes her passion for her craft even stronger. “When you learn about cocktails, you learn about history,” she says. “I love to tell the story of cocktails and make them as authentically as I can.”

Cocktail creation began as an experiment while working at the nowclosed Chalk Food + Wine in 2008, and she soon got noticed for her drinks. Wellmann bounced around the city, bringing her bold flavors with her, and finally partnered with the owners of Famous Neon’s Unplugged to open her very first bar, Japp’s. Old Kentucky Bourbon Bar, Myrtle’s Punch House, Melt and Bottle & Basket all followed, uniting around Wellmann’s commitment to cocktails made with natural, fresh ingredients.

“I have a degree in nutrition,” she says, “so using fresh ingredients is important. It’s really about painting a picture, but with flavors. It’s an art form.”

Wellmann’s artistry has served her well since moving back to the Queen City in 2008, and she’s grateful to the city for welcoming her home. “I’m a proud Cincinnatian,” she says. “I can’t thank the community enough for accepting me for exactly who I am.”

– Maggie Heath-Bourne

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Alfonso Cornejo

President of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Alfonso Cornejo, president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, loves his job.

“The more I work, the happier I am,” says Cornejo, 70, who leads the 317-member Hispanic chamber, the largest in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

Cornejo, who came to Cincinnati nearly 30 years ago from his native Mexico while working for Procter & Gamble Co., planned to only be interim president until he found a permanent successor.

“I couldn’t find anybody so I just kept doing it and now I’ve been doing it 14 years,” he says.

Cornejo grew up a middle class kid in Mexico City. His first job in high school was selling eggs door-to-door. It was before supermarkets were in every neighborhood “so bringing eggs to the buildings around my house was a service,” he says.

“If you can sell eggs like that you can sell almost anything,” he says.

More than a dozen years ago Cornejo and a former P&G associate created Hispanics Avanzando Hispanics, a nonprofit affiliated with the chamber to build awareness between the Hispanic community and the general community.

It has raised more than $400,000 through the sponsorship of Hispanic festivals and other events, which has been distributed to the Hispanic community in the form of scholarships, programs tackling domestic violence and drug use, and publishing a booklet “Cincinnati: A City of Immigrants,” to combat attacks on immigrants.

Since President Trump’s election, incidents of bullying and attacks on Hispanics have increased, Cornejo says. But immigrants and other newcomers are a source of growth in areas like Cincinnati with slow economic growth rates, he says.

“People on toxic radio and TV try to portray us the problem and it’s exactly the opposite,” he says. “We are not the problem. We are the solution.”

– Mike Boyer w w w.

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“Jungle” Jim Bonaminio Owner of Jungle Jim’s International Market

Jim Bonaminio has turned on a computer exactly once in his life. That was to watch singer Susan Boyle’s debut performance on the British TV show Britain’s Got Talent. “My wife had to show me how to turn [the computer on]. I watched it about 15 times,” says Bonaminio.

He doesn’t have much use for technology. He doesn’t even use email.

That’s because Bonaminio loves people. And it’s those people who work for Bonaminio that use the technology that helps conduct the daily business, says Kathy Lane, general manager, creative services at Jungle Jim’s.

But make no mistake about it. As much as Bonaminio loves people the people who shop at Jungle Jim’s International Market love Bonaminio right back. During a recent interview and photo shoot in the Fairfield store, Bonaminio, wearing a steampunk-inspired costume, couldn’t walk more than 50 feet without being stopped and asked to take a photo.

Bonaminio loves entertaining people. In fact, he says he’s not in the grocery business. “I’m in the entertainment business,” he says. That’s apparent if one looks around his stores.

There’s the iconic monorail from Kings Island’s wildlife safari ride, bus stop shelters from Fountain Square, a large tree with an animatronic Robin Hood and a sign that lights up in the soda aisle with a picture of Bonaminio in his Jungle Jim costume with the words “King of Pop.” And the fact that he has Kings Island’s old monorail train is no coincidence. Bonaminio treats his stores like an amusement park. “When I look at this store it’s like Kings Island,” he says. “Gotta have a new ride.

Constantly gotta have new rides.”

His newest planned “ride” is a videoconference room in the Union Township store where experts can talk to people via the internet from all over the world. “It can be used to talk to wine experts, anyone,” he says. “I thought, why not open it up to family outings? People from all over the world can join the party.” Not a bad technological idea from someone who’s only turned on a computer once in his life.

– Eric Spangler 48

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Courtis Fuller Anchor/Reporter, Channel 5 WLWT

Courtis Fuller, anchor and reporter at WLWT, considers himself to be an open book. He’s on TV almost every day, after all, and he’s never been shy. However, he still has a few surprises in him.

“I was a violinist. I was just talking to some of the folks at an after school program at Rothenburg [Preparatory Academy] that I would like to teach Suzuki again,” says Fuller. “I’ve played at the Apollo Theater. …

I was in this [youth] orchestra out of Pittsburgh, [and was] the opening act for some big names like Nancy Wilson and Bill Withers.”

During the 29 years Fuller has worked and lived in Cincinnati, he’s offered the city plenty of surprises. A native of Pittsburgh, he feels strongly about being involved in the Cincinnati community and helping any way he can. He’s worked with literally dozens of nonprofits, including the Cincinnati Scholarship Foundation, the MLK Jr. Coalition and the Senior Citizens Hall of Fame.

He feels so strongly about helping the community that he ran for mayor in 2001. He’d never run for office before, but he won the primary before losing the general election.

“The last thing I needed to do was run for mayor. I was progressing in my career, right in the middle of a pretty long-term contract, everything was pretty good, life was good. I disrupted it dramatically but I felt then and still feel today that it was the right thing to do,” says Fuller. “If I had a dollar for every person who has asked me will I run, am I going to run again, I’d be a wealthy man. For the past 16 years, I probably have talked about that election, and it’s not an exaggeration to say, almost every day.”

-Corinne Minard

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Victoria Morgan Artistic Director, Cincinnati Ballet

Victoria Morgan, artistic director of the Cincinnati Ballet, doesn’t ever really stop thinking about ballet. “I hate to say it, when I’m not doing ballet I’m doing things that are connected. I’m going to concerts. I’m going to see different bands,” she says. “I’m always investigating.”

Morgan, who moved to Cincinnati about 20 years ago, has spent most of her life in dance. She danced with Ballet West and the San Francisco Ballet, worked briefly as a real estate agent and event planner and then transitioned back to dance as the resident choreographer for the San Francisco Opera. When the artistic director positioned opened at the Cincinnati Ballet, Morgan jumped at the opportunity to take the role, which she calls the “ultimate amazing fantasy” job.

Over the years, she has transitioned within the ballet—from artistic director to CEO to artistic director again—and has seen its evolution. “I feel so connected to the company. I have been able to see it evolve and shift. In the early years I was grasping what does it mean to be an artistic director.

I was totally focused on the art form. I wasn’t focused on what does it mean as a community.”

Morgan is always looking to bring that focus on community to the ballet, from the collaborations the ballet chooses to do to its dance education throughout the community. “The more we became a part of the community, the more I felt interest and a vibrancy about [the ballet’s] potential. There’s been some awesome collaborations. We had Peter Frampton on stage, we had Over the Rhine on stage and we’ve done some ballets of great magnitude like our new Nutcracker and King Arthur’s Camelot and there’s been awesome support for that,” she says.

-CM

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Meet

The many sides of WLW’s Bill Cunningham

Willie “I made a serious mistake.”

That’s Bill Cunningham talking about an interview 24 years ago, in 1993. Roxanne Qualls was in the WLW Radio studio for her first interview after being elected mayor the night before.

“I could tell she was apprehensive. I asked her, ‘Do you think it’s ironic that Cincinnati elected a gay mayor on the same day it rejected gay rights?’

“The media wanted me to ask it because they didn’t want to, but I take the blame, it was my question. I wish I could take back my words. The next five seconds were so uncomfortable. I looked into her eyes…” He shakes his head. “I decided I would never use this microphone to destroy someone.”

What? “Willie” blew it? The blustering king of talk in Cincinnati, the “Great American” scourge of political correctness, the man who shook up the 2008 presidential campaign by calling the future president “Barack Hussein Obama,” whose daily “Stoooooge Report” is Queen City Sausage for sacred cows—that guy admits he went too far?

Yes. Cincinnati thinks it knows “Willie.”

He has been in our ears for almost 35 years, talking, talking, talking. He knows everybody and everybody knows him.

He has interviewed all the local celebrities, athletes and politicians and every Republican presidential candidate since the first Bush—except John McCain, whose handlers told Cunningham his introduction was the greatest, then ran for cover when the New York media had a coronary. McCain left town abjectly groveling to the press and condemned Cunningham for the disrespect of using Obama’s middle name.

“I knew right then he wouldn’t win,” Cunningham says, having the last word.

That was vintage Cunningham. So was the reaction during the riots in 2001, when the Cincinnati Enquirer privately agreed

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By Peter Bronson

with a federal judge who said Cunningham should be gagged. Accordng to Cunningham, his dust-up with an Enquirer editor at a local country club that year was gossip gold.

Instead of being censored, Cunningham won his first National Broadcasters Marconi Award. He contributes this to his coverage of the looting, store-burning, rock-throwing violence. “I had several guests on who were directly involved in the riots. I was accused of fomenting the hate, but all I did was let them say what they wanted to say.”

That’s another Bill Cunningham. There are lots. There’s the “Cincinnata” guy who was surprised at home when he picked up the phone at home and heard, “The president is on the line.”

“President of what?” he asked. It was President Trump. “We had a nice conversation,” he says.

There’s the athlete who fits like a batting glove in the WLW locker room, where the Reds and Hall of Famer Marty Brennaman reign supreme. “Willie” was named Cincinnati’s top basketball player at Deer Park High School and was captain of the baseball team at Xavier University. As a golfer, he could shoot his age (he will be 70 in December).

There’s the courtroom law yer who started out as a public defender, assistant attorney general and partner of pioneering black defense lawyer Les Gaines. His radio interviews sound like Mike Wallace grilling F. Lee Bailey. He works without a script to pry loose the kind of quotes that “real” journalists envy.

That Bill Cunningham may be the best reporter in Cincinnati. “I can do 20 minutes with a newsmaker. Nobody else can do that,” he says.

“I’m sometimes amazed at what people say on his show,” says Scott Reinhart, WLW program director.

“In local media he’s front and center,” says Cunningham’s friend Hamilton

County Prosecutor Joe Deters. “I won’t talk to anybody else. I tell the other media to listen to Bill at 1 and you will get the quotes you are looking for.”

Example: During the biggest local story of the year, the shooting of black man Sam DuBose by University of Cincinnati Policeman Ray Tensing, Cunningham’s interviews led the city in breaking news and deep context.

Cunningham is good at it. He has a better Rolodex and more local knowledge than most reporters. When he’s not doing Stooge Reports sandwiched between station promos that hee-haw about porn star puns and boogers, Cunningham gives the best “full report” in town.

He’s the self-styled Johnny Carson of Cincinnati—humor and information.

That’s where talk radio has landed.“The days of lecturing listeners are gone,” says Reinhart.

Cunningham gives a quick tour of talk radio history. “When I started in 1983, we talked about petunias and car repair. I gave legal advice and did psychic shows.

There was no religion, politics or sex because of the Fairness Doctrine.”

That 1949 rule mandated that any controversy had to be balanced by opposing views, so opinions were as welcome as swine flu.

“When that was repealed in 1987, it changed 180 degrees. Suddenly sex, politics and religion were everywhere.

We were yelling and screaming, talking about Larry Flynt and the KKK. Every night was a show.”

Then in 2010, it changed again. “We realized you can’t outdo YouTube and the internet. You can’t shock anyone anymore.

Now it was all about information and humor.” Ipso facto: news-breaking interviews and Stooge Reports.

“It’s a performance. My public persona is not my private persona. On the air, I can’t be quiet and boring. But in private I am not informative or humorous.”

Deters says, “What most people don’t know is that he’s a very good man with a good heart.”

Cunningham calls himself the voice of “the common schlub. People tell me ‘You say things I wish I could say.’”

In Cunningham’s studio, a sign on the wall says, “Hot Tub Open, Swimsuits Optional.” “Hillary For Prison,” says another.

In the corner is an almost life-size cutout of John Wayne with six-shooter, Winchester and pasted-on crazy eyes.

Perfect. A Great American with a streak of the stooge. n

Bill Cunningham has been a radio personality in the Tristate for almost 35 years.

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