The rule is that most things are born small then grow. That wasn’t true of the Minneapolis Athletic Club. It began on August 16, 1915, in a 14-story building, among the tallest in Minneapolis. How could that happen?

Another familiar rule is that we crawl before we run. But for the MAC there was no crawling, only running at incredible speed, from the moment of idea until its doors were opened to members. The MAC was put together in a matter of 33 months. How was that done?

Did the club really pay five times as much in 1967 for the lot for a gym addition as it paid for the original Clubhouse lot? Yes. Has the club spent over 11 times as much on improvements since World War II as on the original clubhouse? Yes, that would be about $7,500,000.00, and that is history, too.

Yes, the Minneapolis Athletic Club is unique. The dictionary says that means "unsurpassed or unusual." That surely applies to the MAC presidents, all 46 of them, most remarkable leaders.