By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Andi (Harding) Weller opened Weller Wireless, an authorized Nextel dealer, Feb. 7 at 103 Commercial St. in the former I. Oppenheim Building, now owned by Alan Fricke.
In the early '90s, Weller, a 1987 Union High School graduate, owned Forget-Me-Not, a card and gift store on Front Street she acquired from Booths.
She left Dowagiac at the end of 1994 for Chicago, where she had always wanted to live.
She considered teaching after high school, but ultimately earned a business degree from Michigan State University.
For a time Weller continued with Hallmark. She has been with Nextel for three years, serving Dowagiac customers from the Berrien Springs office either on her way to work or in the evening on her way home.
She started in South Bend, which had eight Indiana offices. Then the office opened in Michigan. She primarily focuses on Dowagiac and Cassopolis.
Though she lived in Dowagiac the past three years, she drove to South Bend or to Berrien Springs and had been away from downtown, except on weekends if she came into town for a bite to eat at one of the restaurants.
Nextel's merger with Sprint "won't affect us because we're in southwest Michigan and there's no Sprint service here," she said. "As of now, they're going to remain two different companies."
Nextel is based in Reston, Va. Nextel's Michigan operation is based in Grand Rapids.
Andi's been married for a year to Nate Weller, who works for a water company in Stevensville. They dated when she had the card store, but went their separate ways when she moved to Chicago.
Weller Wireless is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., from 2 to 5:30 p.m. and by appointment. Saturday hours are 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Her phone number is 782-2300.