Justin Gillespie,
entrepreneur
The power of we
by Austina Reed, PhD
Published: August 14, 2026, 7:30 p.m. ET
Justin Gillespie’s know-how is using the language of “we” and “us” to explain his hometown Lagro’s successes.
Launching small business, supporting neighborhood rehabilitation, motivating residents to pitch in; these are the trifecta of a successful community development model. Justin has accomplished a feat other town managers and city councils would like to have. He has roused groups to work together. They have stabilized Lagro’s economy by playing to its strengths.
The French philosopher and historian Alexis de Tocqueville would have something to say if he were to revisit the American experiment in democracy in its 250th year. Association, de Tocqueville would be pleased to know, is alive and well in Lagro. He would find a prominent model to study. One could imagine him sitting down with small business owner Justin Gillespie over the course of an afternoon, just like we did, and thoroughly enjoying the depth of conversation in all matters local.
Association
is a form of voluntarism.
It is also belonging.
To be more exact, voluntarism and
belonging are
two sides of the
same coin.
Lagro
Small business flexes
The Town of Lagro has approximately 150 households and 400 residents. The physical features which impose their borders on the townspeople are immutable: the Wabash River, Salamonie River and State Forest, land trusts, U.S. 24’s federally-designated industrial corridor, and state highway Blue Star Memorial. From a bird's eye view, Lagro may seem hemmed in.
It’s a feeling small, rural communities have experienced, those which share an address with the U.S. highway system on one side and the river or railroad on the other. Scalability becomes a recurring debate for them: What is the community’s capacity for growth as measured by its geography, population, market potential, political will, et cetera?
From the late 1980s until the early 2000s, the fear was for Lagro’s extinction by unincorporation.
Today, there is optimism in Lagro. As one of the town’s several not-for-profit organizations, the Lagro Canal Foundation has developed and tested over the past decade the town’s go-to playbook for networking. It functions like a business incubator and community planner. It possesses civic influence. Its effectiveness should have the attention of every national and regional news outlet across the country.
Association is a form of voluntarism. It is also a state of belonging. To be more exact, the willingness to engage so as to better one’s community (voluntarism) and the feeling of personal attachment to the community’s culture (belonging) are two sides of the same coin.
A key objective of association is stability or, to be more exact, it’s about creating and maintaining a resilient political economy for the community. De Tocqueville called this relationship the equality of conditions. To pull oneself up by the bootstraps. Social mobility isn't some theoretical possibility; it happens every day, with every transaction, between proprietor and customer. Small businesses provide amenities in a way that corporations and governments may not.
De Tocqueville acknowledged the role of the merchant, or the proprietor of small business, to inspire and sustain democracy.
This equality of conditions – and by extension the power of association – is uniquely American. Small businesses have always had a vested interest in civics.
Justin is an entrepreneur and owner, one of the 80 or so registered businesses and organizations representing the Lagro community. Along with the 14 board members of the Lagro Canal Foundation, they are contributing to the growth of a vital community.
To hum with aliveness
The Wabash River Defenders sparked a local movement when the self-proclaimed “river rats” first met at a Lagro café in 2011. Annual event-gathering. Volunteers in the hundreds. Public-private partnerships. Tons of garbage removed from the river, its bed, its banks.
They make organizing look easy. Year after year, their section of the river stays clean. Downstream benefits. And always the offer to meet further upstream, another county, another section of the Wabash. They take pride in this particular accomplishment at stewardship. They’re building a legacy. The river rats’ approach vis-à-vis the Wabash River Defenders becomes a model for other communities to adopt. They win awards.
Enter the second association in Lagro’s success story.
A few people envisioned building a river trail, Justin being one of them. The idea generated buzz. It raised hackles. It brought the consultants. Workarounds shaped the community’s conversation for months – between neighbors, between property owners and town leadership, between tried-and-true small business owners and would-be investors. The group of volunteers would tell the consultants no to eminent domain as strategy: Let’s use prescriptive easement instead. They realized that it was as good a time as any to review ordinances.
The trail’s seven-mile route was planned, publicized, and initially funded by local contributions; then re-publicized and approved. The final agreed-upon trail system was paved, marked, and funded for another round – this time, by outsiders.
The group incorporated, becoming the Wabash River Trail by 2015. That's the other key element of association: trust-building. “A lot of state organizations and a lot of people that get asked for donations and grant monies…, they’re thinking: ‘Okay, we’ll donate … (and) probably never see it happen.’” Justin said. “But with the river trail, it was the other way around. It got to the point where the state approached us. They saw progress. Some of these trail projects (other communities' trail systems) took 30, 40, 50 years to see progress.”
The group counted it a win with the first kayak put-in; and the reluctant opponents, too, biking. “We did this in record time,” Justin remembered. “Even the consultants said, ‘You need to slow down. We’re not used to working at this fast pace.’
"People love to see, ‘Hey, my money actually did something good in the community, and I’m able to enjoy it. This group is making it happen.'"
Photo credit by Lavonne Sparling
The spirited playbook
Lagro is unique because the work of volunteers came first. Small groups of them recognized needs in the community, and they formed associations. Lagro is being revived by business anchors of that association.
The Lagro Canal Foundation was hitting its stride in 2020, three years after the group incorporated, when pandemic advisories shuttered everything. The board members continued planning and working. Not on their watch, they agreed, will they allow another building to fall.
So they pulled out a paper map of the town’s plats and called in local experts. A new graduate recently returned home to Lagro, for example, circled the town’s architectural gems. Colonial. Greek revival. One of the oldest standing Catholic Churches in Indiana, the mother church of the Wabash Valley. The limestone Kerr Lock, the last of four, upstream from the canal house. All of them pinpoint the town’s historical timeline defining Indiana’s trade nexus to the rest of the country.
A group of them attended sheriff’s sales and auctions, spending no more than a couple thousand per property from their own pockets. These historic buildings slated for demolition were stabilized, then preserved, and ultimately restored. By Justin’s own admission, anything worth saving takes a lot of sweat equity.
He spent nearly two years on the two buildings he and his partners bought, trying to retain as much of the original as possible; a combined 300 years of history at stake.
When Justin and other business owners were finally ready to open, it was unfathomable the extent to which COVID-19 infringed upon, and then silenced, relationship-building. So Justin and the Lagro Canal Foundation’s board did what seemed most logical in order to hold on: They recruited more small businesses in anticipation of what family, friends, residents and visitors – indeed, future customers – might desire most in the peace and quiet of their small town.
Finding foundation(al) value
To seed the kind of transformation Lagro is experiencing, generations and their timelines deserve a true and fair accounting. Justin is a bridge; he’s intentional to host both young and old. Some 15 years have passed since the river rats first met. A 2005 finance graduate of Manchester College (now Manchester University), Justin works full-time in Wabash. By night and on weekends, he manages the two small businesses he co-owns with partners.
Justin described economic and community development by using analogies. Selling the promise of a town’s future worth, that’s like an initial public offering, the IPO, he suggested, to borrow from the language of stock markets. Get in early when prices are their lowest. Pool and leverage resources – that’s local capital made available for actual bricks-and-mortar improvements. Exercise the confidence that businesses, investors and consumers need to know exists.
It’s like the whole town understands the opportunity of market-making, a chance at a re-do so rare for small towns that they’ll take calculated risks to prove the soundness of their investments.
Lagro Canal Foundation board members present at town and county meetings. Their progress is featured in a tourism magazine. An interview about a town-wide event is picked up by one of Fort Wayne’s news outlets. It’s clear that board members share a level of trust by sticking to the talking points. A singular voice is lifted up, offering on behalf of the Town of Lagro and its residents a consistent message of hope and commitment.
The second of Justin’s analogies is that of the old Mustang found in a barn; both car and barn well past their prime. One man’s treasure? Another’s albatross? It depends on perspective, Justin pointed out. What does it mean to save a past generations’ dreams, their work, and trophies; and, what should the next generation make of this inheritance? Justin networks to be able to move forward; find the person who has the tools, someone else who has the parts, yet another who wants to restore it, drive it, show it. And if those with know-how say it can’t be done, then so be it.
Functional, Justin reminded us, is our reality.
Awakened
Lagro’s legacy is tied to the water. The first opportunity for Lagro’s incorporation began to take shape with the laborers who worked in the area along the Wabash River to build the Erie Canal in 1834. The Irish stayed; they bought land, laid cornerstone, farmed, assembled and prayed, opened businesses, traded.
When equality of conditions is satisfied, incorporation – like association – is another step towards cohesion, a way of life, and culture. The like-minded gather. Small groups of people find that they are both willing and capable of working together to represent – and better – their lives. That’s the American-style of democracy de Tocqueville would have observed in the making. In 1835, he published the first volume of his seminal work Democracy in America; the second volume in 1840.
It’s like de Tocqueville recognized the do-it-yourself element of America. The same DIY spirit lives in Lagro now, circa 2026, showcased every time Justin or one of the Lagro Canal Foundation board members gives tours of the original town square, small businesses celebrating their fifth anniversary, the river trail. We visitors are as proud to learn Lagro’s story as they are in telling it to us.
Fittingly, Lagro residents can point to the Wall, a monument of sorts on the “main” street which is directly across from where the Salamonie and Wabash Rivers meet, and they can measure their progress. The Wall’s history is metaphorically profound, even as it serves as a physical marker. Like the canal lock is too.
Liberty is hard-earned; to each his own. Lift one boat, lift all boats.
The prescription that de Tocqueville opined was simply that Americans seize the opportunity – we take whatever advantage we can – to advance our interests and improve our lives. That we do so in such a manner to encourage and support one another to succeed? This uniquely American twist on voluntarism and belonging is what de Tocqueville found promising about our style of governance and economy.
Since those first volunteers met to clean up the Wabash River 15 years ago, approximately 60 businesses with the 46941 zip code registered for the first time with Indiana's Secretary of State. Even more remarkable is the fact that some 50 of them launched after 2017, the incorporation date of the Lagro Canal Foundation. Of course, correlation is not causation – but compelling nonetheless. Members of the Lagro Canal Foundation need only point to the storefronts they saved, and the 10 or so businesses housed in them, as evidence of community impact.
Susan Miller making historical restorations in Lagro.
Photo credit by Lavonne Sparling
Happy endings
The Lagro Canal Foundation’s board is led by two women, president Beth Gillespie and secretary and grant writer Lavonne Sparling.
Beth, Justin’s mother, is a descendent of Irish dairy farmers who have called Lagro home for generations. Lavonne moved to Lagro in the early 1970s, raising first her children and then other Wabash County families’ children as a teacher. The two women know how to attract young people, extended families, and entrepreneurs to live in Lagro.
“It reminds me of what Helen Keller once said, ‘Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.' One person can’t do it all. You have to get people motivated and excited to join the group, whether it’s our group or their own,” Beth reflected.
Beth and Lavonne have prepared the board for Lagro's next phase of community development; namely, national designation by Main Street America as of January 2026. The town’s accreditation earns Wabash the accolade of being one of Indiana’s most decorated counties with more Main Street associations in its small and rural communities than any other of comparable size.
Government agencies, community foundations, historical preservation and environmental groups, and donors; all of these types of grantmakers seek out the Lagro Canal Foundation. They invite them to use their funding to complement the work of the board, the town and its businesses and organizations.
The best kind of tale – this moral of the story – is when community members have their needs and wants met by their own volition. It’s as if every household can boast having made the town they love.
Justin said, “We’ve had disagreements and then the dominoes are falling in the same direction.”
Thank you for reading!
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