Free enterprise.(Robert Kern)(Brief article)

Late last year, Robert Kern, 81, sold his share of the ownership of Generac Power Systems Inc., a Waukesha, Wisconsin, company, and retired as the company's chairman. Mr. Kern and his wife, Patricia, have been philanthropists for some time and had established a charitable foundation, and so it might be expected that they would do good with their profits. They didn't disappoint. They apparently decided to use their personal funds from the sale of the company to reward those who had made the company a success over the years.

Shortly before Christmas, employees started receiving some rather large checks in the mail from Mr. and Mrs. Kern personally, not the company. Though no one knows for sure the formula the Kerns used, the amounts appear to have been based on each employee's length of service. George Plehn, who worked at Generac for 19 years, received a check for $31,000.

"My jaw dropped when I saw" the check in the mail, Plehn told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "This was a huge ...