Wissy Wendt, Long Realty Co.’s president since 2005, said past chronological benchmarks in her life were no big deal.

Thirty? Fine. Forty? No problem. Fifty? She took it “pretty well.”

“But I’m turning 60, and I’m going, ‘Ay yai yai!’ It’s a huge benchmark for me, for whatever reason,” Wendt said.

And so, after seven years with Long Realty, the woman who was charged with starting up the company’s mortgage, title and insurance arms, is retiring. Sort of. After taking a break, she plans to start a consulting business.

“I have the luxury in my life of taking a little bit of time off,” Wendt said. “I’ve had just the most extraordinary experience here at Long.”

Wendt has no family in Tucson. She’s single, her daughters are grown, and family members live in New York, Massachusetts, Florida and other places east. She plans to leave Tucson sometime next month.

Wendt’s consulting business will be based on her experience in opening Long’s other branches. Her firm will offer help to real estate companies that want to provide more in-house services. In an age of e-mails and cell phones, she hopes to keep her office back East while working with colleagues who live in different parts of the country.

Wendt already has handed the reins over to George “Kip” Longan, 72, former manager of Long’s Foothills office at 5683 N. Swan Road.

Longan earned a business degree from the University of Arizona in 1956 and attended law school at the University of Kansas. He was president of three different real estate companies before moving here from Kansas City in 1994. He intended to retire, but that “didn’t work out” after Steve Quinlan, Long’s board chairman, asked him to join the company.

Longan, who served on the board of directors for the Arizona Association of Realtors from 1999 to 2000, said he doesn’t have any specific goals yet other than to “take care of the agents and their customers and the managers.”

Nancy LaPoff, Longan’s daughter, is also a Long Realty agent, based in the Foothills office.

Source: www.azstarnet.com

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