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E-mail: matzken@uwgb.edu

 

Jim Wochinske '74, Managerial Systems
Hometown: Green Bay
Owner and President, Pomp's Tire Service Inc.
Family: Wife Kathy '74 (humanism and cultural change) and children Kelly, Paul, and Kyeong

A big name in tire circles
Pomp’s Tire Service carries a proud Green Bay name — just not the name of the family that has owned and grown the business since 1964.
      Which maybe says a little something about Jim Wochinske ’74 and his late father, Roger.
      “We just never had any reason to change it,” says Jim, whose father bought the small tire center and warehouse, with its five employees, when founder Andrew “Sparky” Pomprowitz passed away.
      “The Pomprowitz family was fairly well known around here, and they also had a big appliance store,” Jim recalls. “Dad just shortened it to Pomp’s. I guess one advantage was that the name would fit on a marquee.”
      Today, Pomp’s is the name to know, an industry giant with 1,000 employees, 70 stores and 12 retread shops in eight states across the Upper Midwest. Sales data is confidential, but trade publications put Pomp’s near the top of the list of the largest independent tire dealers in the United States.
      Friends suggest it wouldn’t be in Jim Wochinske’s nature, anyway, to have his own name plastered over all those signs, company trucks, service vehicles and marquees.
      “Jim has an unassuming and quiet manner,” says friend Rick Chernick ’74. “He is also a fabulous business man who works very hard at what he does, but it all starts with being a wonderful, kind, generous human being.”
      Wochinske began with Pomp’s in high school in the mid-1960s. He continued through his years at UW-Green Bay and after graduation, and assumed the helm in 1986 when his father retired. At the time, the business had a dozen stores and fewer than 200 employees.
      Since then, growth has been as steady as the CEO’s humble demeanor and rock-solid reputation for integrity. With a brand focus on customer service and reliability, essential in the tire business, Wochinske and Pomp’s are familiar names in the corporate boardrooms of the nation’s biggest tire manufacturers.
      Tires for trucking, industrial and farm use drive the business. (Passenger vehicles account for a relatively small share of Pomp’s volume.) Retread services and roadside assistance are key elements. The latter explains the company’s expansion pattern, with locations spider-webbed across the Midwest to serve major transport hubs, with additional stores strategically located every 40 miles or so along primary truck routes.
      Through it all, the Green Bay roots remain strong, the motto is still “We know tires,” and what is now the national headquarters is still on Cedar Street, near the East River, just where Sparky Pomprowitz opened shop more than 50 years ago.
      “Jim grew up in Green Bay. He and I went to grade school, middle school, East High and UWGB together,” Chernick says. “He has a true love for people, especially for the Green Bay community. For this University, too.”
The love of his life:
Jim Wochinske is married to the former Kathy Keidatz, also a 1974 UW-Green Bay graduate, who earned her degree in humanism and cultural change. The couple met while on a UW-Green Bay study trip to London in January 1971.
Continuing connections:
Wochinske has been an active advocate for UW-Green Bay for many years, supporting the Alumni Association — helping start an endowment fund — as well as Phoenix Athletics, the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts, and the Kress Events Center.

        . . . CAMPUS NEWS