5 files on the desk from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. 5 carry a net-worth figure.
Profile · Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Advice columnist Ann Landers; Eau Claire adult residence (not Dear Abby / Pauline Phillips, her twin)
$3.75 million
Esther Pauline “Eppie” Friedman Lederer became Ann Landers, the syndicated advice columnist whose one-liners reached tens of millions of readers. Before Chicago fame she spent roughly a decade of adult life in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, as a Presto company wife who chaired the county Democrats and worked against Joe McCarthy.
She was born July 4, 1918, in Sioux City, Iowa, seventeen minutes ahead of her identical twin Pauline (“Popo,” later Dear Abby). The sisters married in a double wedding in identical dresses in 1938. After World War II both husbands worked at National Presto in Eau Claire; the twins lived about a mile apart, led parades in a Cadillac convertible, watched the Eau Claire Bears at Carson Park, volunteered for the Red Cross, and threw costume parties that local editor Marshall Atkinson later remembered as “the ten years of twins.” Pauline’s house was the bigger one. Eppie chaired the Eau Claire County Democratic Party. They left in the mid-1950s.
In Chicago she won the Sun-Times contest to replace the original Ann Landers, Ruth Crowley, by sending sample copy that quoted experts, including a Supreme Court justice. Three months later her twin launched Dear Abby in San Francisco. The sisters stopped speaking. American advice culture was born, in part, in a Presto company town. She died in 2002. The Eau Claire claim is the adult stretch, not a birthplace.
Profile · Eau Claire, Wisconsin
NHL defenseman for the Toronto Maple Leafs; born in Eau Claire, Memorial High
$33 million
Jake McCabe is the Eau Claire defenseman who skated on ice his father poured in the yard and carried that backyard rink all the way to the NHL. He was born in Eau Claire on October 12, 1993, played one varsity season at Memorial High, then left for USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program and finished high school in three years.
At Memorial he put up 22 points in 23 games as a freshman. Wisconsin Badgers hockey came next: a severed finger tendon as a freshman, All-Big Ten as a junior. Buffalo selected him forty-fourth overall in 2012. He captained the United States to World Junior gold in 2013, scoring three goals and three assists with a plus-nine and making the all-tournament team. His father, David, had played college hockey at Alaska Fairbanks and built the backyard rink; family construction and landscaping work helped pay the youth-hockey bills.
NHL stops followed with the Sabres and Blackhawks before a 2023 deadline trade to the Toronto Maple Leafs, where he has been a top-four, stay-at-home defenseman and posted a career-high eight goals and twenty-eight points in 2023–24. Brother Andrew later won a Division III national title at UW–Eau Claire; cousin Eric Decker caught NFL passes. McCabe is the clean current-athlete hometown claim: born here, Memorial, still the name local rinks use when they tell kids it can be done.
Profile · Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Founder of Menards home-improvement stores; born and based in Eau Claire
$19.4 billion
John Robert Menard Jr. is Wisconsin’s hardware billionaire who never moved the headquarters out of Eau Claire. Born there on January 22, 1940, the oldest of eight in a Catholic family of teachers, he attended Regis High and UW–Eau Claire, put up pole buildings to pay for college, turned down IBM in 1963, and built a cash-and-carry lumber and hardware shop into Menards.
His father, John Sr., was a university professor; his mother, Rosemary, taught grade school. First construction work came in 1958, years before Home Depot launched. The chain grew to more than 340 stores from Wyoming to West Virginia, with estimated sales around $13 billion, still privately held and still headquartered in Eau Claire. Inside the company he is famous for making even senior people punch a time clock. The white-haired “Save big money at Menards” pitchman was Milwaukee actor Ray Szmanda, not Menard himself.
Racing is the other empire: decades of IndyCar, a 2019 Indianapolis 500 winner after nearly forty years of trying, son Paul in NASCAR, and fluorescent-yellow cars visible from the grandstand. Local gifts include $15 million to Luther Midelfort Hospital in 2008 and $10 million toward the John and Fay Menard YMCA tennis center. He has also been a polarizing employer, with union hostility and older environmental and labor cases on the public record. Forbes listed him at $19.4 billion on its March 10, 2026 World’s Billionaires ranking. The Eau Claire claim is birth, schooling, residence, and the plant that never left.
Profile · Eau Claire, Wisconsin
First Hmong American elected to U.S. municipal office; Eau Claire city council member and qeej master
$3,000
Joua Bee "Joe Bee" Xiong was the Eau Claire civic leader who became the first Hmong American elected to municipal government in the United States. He was born on August 10, 1961, in Muong Cha, Laos, served as a child soldier in the CIA-backed Secret War, crossed the Mekong, lived in a Thai refugee camp, and arrived in Eau Claire in 1980 with no English. He entered Memorial High School as a teenager who spoke none of the language and graduated at twenty-one.
He studied computer science at Chippewa Valley Technical College and criminal justice at Mount Senario, later earning a master's degree. He worked as a reserve police officer, a county social worker, and director of the Eau Claire Hmong Mutual Assistance Association, and he was a clan leader. He was also a qeej master who played funerals and ceremonies and took the bamboo pipes to the 1998 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. In 1996 he won a seat on the Eau Claire City Council, the first Hmong American elected to municipal office in the country, and served two terms. A 2004 run for the Wisconsin Assembly fell short.
He died of heart complications on March 31, 2007, while visiting Laos. Thousands attended a three-day traditional funeral. The legislature passed a joint resolution in his honor, and Eau Claire renamed the street he had lived on Xiong Boulevard.
Profile · Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Musician and Bon Iver founder; born in Eau Claire and still based in the Chippewa Valley
$4.3 million
Justin DeYarmond Edison Vernon is the Eau Claire musician who turned a Dunn County hunting-cabin winter into Bon Iver and then refused to let the tour bus relocate the scene. He was born in Eau Claire on April 30, 1981, graduated from Memorial High in 1999, and studied at UW–Eau Claire as a religious-studies major who was not yet ready to major in music.
At Memorial he was football captain, a jazz-band kid, and a student-council type. His first band, Mount Vernon, formed after a high-school jazz camp in 1997. After DeYarmond Edison split in North Carolina amid illness, a poker wipeout, and a breakup, he spent the winter of 2006–07 at his father Gil’s hunting cabin in Dunn County, chopping wood, hunting, and stacking falsetto. For Emma, Forever Ago began as homemade CDs, caught a Pitchfork rave, and put Eau Claire on the indie map.
He stayed. April Base studio in Fall Creek hosted everyone from Sufjan Stevens to Bruce Hornsby. He co-owns downtown’s Oxbow Hotel and The Lakely with local partners and, with The National’s Aaron Dessner, founded the Eaux Claires festival (2015–18; returning 2026 at Carson Park). Grammys and high-profile collaborations followed, along with a Wisconsin outline tattooed on his chest. The city did not lose him to Brooklyn; he built a scene and pointed the bus home.