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| Affiliation | Republican |
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| Name | Marty Ozinga |
| Address |
Homer Glen, Illinois , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | [Link] |
| Born |
January 09, 1950
(74 years)
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| Contributor | COSDem |
| Last Modifed | Paul 🇺🇦
Sep 12, 2015 11:52am |
| Tags |
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| Info | Marty Ozinga is a Republican candidate for U.S. Congress in Illinois' 11th District.
Ozinga Bros., based in Mokena, IL, is the largest private family-owned concrete company in the country. Marty - already an enterprising entrepreneur and successful businessman at age 23 - became General Manager in 1973. The 45-year-old business employed 80 people at the time. Thirty-five years later, about 1200 people work for Ozinga Bros., and many more work for one of several start-up companies Marty has founded.
Marty led the family business to the top of the industry and created hundreds of good local jobs in the process – and his commitment to serving others did not end with his customers and employees. Rather than resting on his success in business, Marty has passionately devoted himself to charitable works. His generous dedication to helping those less fortunate has brightened the futures of thousands across the globe, from inner-city Chicago children to AIDS patients in Uganda.
But Marty started small.
Born on January 9, 1950, and raised in the middle-class south suburb of Evergreen Park, Martin Ozinga, III idolized his father - Marty, Jr. - from an early age. And just like his dad, Marty went into business - at the age of six.
Before entering high school, Marty had held four jobs - selling Kool-Aid to construction workers from a wagon, going door-to-door as a greeting-card salesman, delivering newspapers on a bicycle route every day after school and operating a lawn-maintenance business that counted a dozen clients.
When he was fifteen, Marty started work at Ozinga Bros. as a $1-per-hour yard laborer, sweeping the surrounding streets and sidewalks of material spill-overs. Throughout high school, Marty worked hard for each new promotion: from sweeping sidewalks, to loading concrete trucks, to driving small dump trucks. At eighteen, he was driving the red-and-white-striped ready-mix concrete trucks for union-scale wages.
Marty enrolled at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, in 1968, coming home during summers to drive the red-and-white trucks.
In 1970, Marty and his high school sweetheart, Ruth, married and bought a small house in Grand Rapids as they both finished school. To cover their expenses, Ruth worked at a furniture store and Marty started a concrete construction business. He hired his college friends to drive the company's two trucks and gave estimates to customers in the evenings after classes. The company was a success and Marty graduated with a B.A. in Psychology.
Six months later, Marty became General Manager at Ozinga Bros. and embarked on an ambitious plan to expand the business. The company opened a new yard in Mokena in 1974 and now operates about 30 locations in the Chicagoland area. Marty realized his childhood dream of succeeding his father as President in 1985.
Marty's father instilled in him the importance of leadership through serving others. It's those same values that are driving him to run for Congress, and it's that same sense of duty that has guided Marty's extensive non-for-profit work.
By his early twenties, he was using his free time to help build cabins at Camp Tall Turf, a Michigan summer camp for inner-city kids.
He has served on four school boards, including a stint as President of Roseland Christian School, which serves the primarily African-American community that surrounds its campus on the southside of Chicago. Marty is also an active board member of Restoration Ministries, a recovery program for drug addicts in Harvey, IL.
Marty owns and helped found the Dr. Luca Medical Center - a unique for-profit/non-profit hybrid - in Pitesti, Romania. The 50-employee, multi-specialty clinic has brought significant health care improvements to a despairing community, and the clinic's earnings are used to fund non-profits that serve the health care needs of impoverished Romanians. With a special passion for spiritual and economic rebirth in post-Communist Eastern Europe, Marty also serves as a Trustee of the new Russian-American Christian University in Moscow.
Each year, Marty takes time off from Ozinga Bros. to serve in far-flung locales such as the slums of Kampala, Uganda and the tribal lands of eastern India, working with local health professionals to relieve community health problems such as AIDS, malaria, and malnutrition.
At Marty's direction, Ozinga Bros. donates a significant portion of its annual profits to charitable organizations.
Ruth and Marty have been married for 37 years and have six sons, four daughters-in-law and eight grandchildren, with two more on the way. They are active members of Eagle Rock Community Church and have lived in Will County since 1992.
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