I have to chuckle at a story Mark told about his successful efforts to get into some of the finest jewelry stores in the US: “I’d tried several times to get the buyer of Neiman Marcus on the phone and had absolutely no luck. My wife and I traveled to Dallas, where the main store was located, and were told that the buyer did not accept phone calls. Well, we went to the office with 3 grocery bags filled with black boxes and told the receptionist that we had an appointment, which of course, we did not. We sat there, waiting, and shortly, sure enough, out came that buyer. These were her exact words ‘If it wasn’t for this Manpower girl, I wouldn’t be talking to you. You have 5 minutes.’ “


Apparently, the buyer turned out to be very pleasantly surprised and soon Mark’s jewelry collection was in all their stores. He also cultivated relationships with independent galleries and stores all throughout the Western United States. “I put 62,000 miles on a new Corvette during 2 years of the late 70’s, traveling from my ranch in Nebraska down through that entire territory.”


For more than 20 years, Mark juggled both architecture and jewelry. “My jewelry clients thought the architecture was a hobby, and the architecture clients figured jewelry was a hobby.” He completed over 200 architectural projects, during which


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