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"He was one great competitor," Cotroneo recalls fondly. More than once, Peltier and his brothers got police escorts home after a game because of death threats from the other team's side. "His leadership qualities as a teenager were amazing," his high school coach, Lou Cotroneo, recalls. Peltier, who played center, pushed himself hard and became captain of his high school team. Peltier, who remained friends with Brooks and played golf with him the day he died in a car crash in 2003, remembers well that Brooks was demanding of his players, stingy with compliments and would sometimes yell, "You're playing worse every day, and today you're playing like tomorrow." Olympic team to a stunning victory over the Soviets on the way to a gold medal in 1980. One of his childhood hockey coaches was "Miracle on Ice" coach Herb Brooks, who later led the U.S.
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The drive to perform better every day was drilled into Peltier on the hockey rink.
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He was the only guy who would tell me the truth, never mince words." He would be honest if I played a good game or not. Peltier says his dad "was the first person I sought out after every game, right through college. He earned his MBA from the University of St.
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Paul, Peltier was awarded a full scholarship to the University of Minnesota, where he studied history and political science.
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After winning the Minnesota High School Athlete of the Year award in 1967 while at Johnson Senior High School in St. Peltier and his three brothers, one older, two younger, were all avid ice hockey players. "He couldn't look a fish in the eye," Peltier says with a laugh over a dinner of sole at a restaurant here. Peltier remembers him as a "stubborn Frenchman" who married a Lutheran Swedish woman and converted from his Catholic faith mainly so he could eat meat on Fridays. That common-sense prudence is a lesson straight from Peltier's father, George, who his son says "always wanted to do the right thing." George Peltier, who died in 1989, was an executive at Brown & Bigelow, a maker of promotional products and calendar advertising. "I don't want to sound holier-than-thou, but it was irritating when there were all kinds of players out there in the market offering all kinds of products that were questionable," says Peltier, 58. In keeping with Buffett's conservative approach, Peltier's lending division, which accounts for about 15% of the company's profits, avoided offering the kind of risky adjustable-rate loans that have burned many lenders. HomeServices also offers homeowners insurance and title services, and it runs a mortgage venture with Wells Fargo. Since Buffett bought HomeServices seven years ago, the Minneapolis-based company has shot up from about 4,000 agents in three markets to 20,000 agents in 20 markets, including Prudential California and Edina Realty in Minneapolis. "We want to be in the top 60 markets in America in the next five years," Peltier says. It's Peltier's task to scope out deals with high-quality, but beaten-down, realty firms that might be ripe for acquisition. The man who will try to seize some of those opportunities for him is Ron Peltier, CEO of HomeServices of America, the real estate arm of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA, BRKB) and the nation's second-largest residential brokerage firm. He told a group of his real estate managers late last month in Omaha that he sees this as a time of opportunity. WASHINGTON - Lenders are collapsing, home sales and prices in many markets are falling and lots of investors are panicking.