News & Events – Page 15 – The Wege Foundation

Letters to Peter Wege from S. African Travelers

January 5, 2012September 2, 2014Community Service

After the 1960s race riots, Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church members made a bold decision. They converted nearby Baxter Christian School into a safe haven where their neighbors white and black could come together as one. Some forty years later, Baxter Community Center continues to be “an island of hope” in the neighborhood with Grand Rapids’ highest crime rate.

Mizizi Maji, Swahili for “root water,” is Baxter’s mentoring program that offers children ages eight to 18 academic support with one adult tutor for each student. As the participants’ grades go up, so does their self-esteem and their hope for becoming “healthy, responsible citizens.”

“May God bless you for the kindness,” Calvon Owens wrote Peter Wege after the trip. “You have helped me be open-minded about many things.” In his thank-you letter, Tony Taylor wrote that the trip “gave me an idea of what I would like to do with my life and this is see the world for myself and be a living testament of God’s will.”

Shapell Gillon told Mr. Wege that she’d learned South Africa has 11 different languages, and they drive on the left side of the road. “Did you know,” Nyah McKinney wrote to Peter Wege, “they burn grass to make it grow back faster in the summer?”

Raqhelle Millbrooks told Peter Wege that TV was wrong about all Africans “being starved with flies on their faces.” Instead she saw the people as “singing or laughing no matter what place they are in.”

Baxter’s leader Sharon LaChappelle called the trip for these young people at such susceptible ages “a strong counter to all the negative things that seek to pull them down.” What they took home was so positive, Sharon wrote, “it was as if “the whole family went!”

A powerful incentive for the Mizizi students is a trip. The first two years the students who kept a 3-point GPA for three straight years went to Canada. In 2011, nine Mizizi students ages 13-15 traveled to South Africa for ten days, courtesy of The Wege Foundation.

Raqhelle Millbrooks told Peter Wege that TV was wrong about all Africans “being starved with flies on their faces.” Instead she saw the people as “singing or laughing no matter what place they are in.”

Looking Back on a Theatre and a Friendship

January 1, 2012September 2, 2014Arts & Culture

Wealthy Theatre is honoring its 100th anniversary that began with years of magical entertainment, followed by a time of decay, and now celebrating its renewed stardom. From the day it opened in 1911, Wealthy Theatre was its neighborhood’s main attraction – even claiming its own streetcar stop.

Originally named the Pastime Vaudette, the ornate theater hosted live entertainment. But before long, vaudeville was gone and the Pastime’s 400 seats were used by silent-movie goers. During World War I, Pastime closed down entirely, its large spaces storing equipment for the Michigan Aircraft Company.

In 1920, the Pastime reopened as the freshly painted baroque Wealthy Theatre. The new owners happened to be Oscar and Lillian Varneau, parents of Peter Wege’s best friend Gordy.

But by the 1950s, Wealthy Theatre began losing customers both to TV and to the new big screens built in the suburbs. In 1973, Wealthy Theatre closed and stood empty for 14 years.

The boarded-up eyesore soon became a public hazard as the area was taken over by gangs and drugs. In 1989, Grand Rapids’ City Commission voted to demolish Wealthy Theatre.

That’s when the area’s concerned residents and business owners formed the non-profit South East Economic Development to save Wealthy Theatre. They knew razing it would further damage their once vibrant neighborhood and business district.

The cost to repair the destruction done over years of vacancy and vandalism was daunting. But SEED had one shining hope. They knew Peter Wege as an environmentalist committed to restoring, not destroying. One can only imagine the SEED leaders’ joy when they discovered Peter also had strong personal affection for Wealthy Theatre because it was about Gordy Varneau and his parents.

Peter Wege led the campaign that raised $2.2 million allowing Wealthy Theatre to reopen in 1997 as a performing arts center.

petergordy — Peter Wege with lifelong friend Gordy Varneau. Peter has great memories growing up watching Westerns with Gordy at Wealthy where they earned 25 cents an hour as ushers.

Wealthy-Theatre-1936-300x220 — Wealthy Street Theatre – 1936

wealthytheatreroof — “The Rick Beerhorst Band” at (or rather, on) the Wealthy Street Theatre in Grand Rapids on April 14, 2010. The show got shut down by the calling of the police. Apparently, it was causing a bit of a hazard as the cars drove by and slowed down/stopped to gawk at the folks playing a show on top of the marquis.

Gilda’s Club Planning LaughFest 2012

November 30, 2011September 2, 2014Community Service, Health Care

The overwhelming success of Gilda Club’s first LaughFest in March 2011 meant for sure the cancer-support group would do it again. With 55,000 people attending last year’s ten-day marathon of funny people on stage, Gilda’s Club leaders knew they had a good thing going. Even more important, the original LaughFest raised $330,000 to help fund West Michigan’s three Gilda’s Clubs in Grand Rapids, Lowell, and Holland.

When Gilda Radner, Saturday Night Live’s beloved comedian, died in 1989, her family and friends honored her by starting clubs around the country where cancer patients and families could gather in community. Three Grand Rapids cancer survivors – Twink Frey, Deb Bailey, and Susan Smith – decided their city needed a Gilda’s Club too.

Their organizing energy led to Gilda’s Club Grand Rapids opening its signature red door in 2001. Peter Wege, whose mother and father had died of cancer, joined these women’s cause with a major capital gift. The Wege Foundation has continued to be a strong supporter of Gilda’s.

Ticket information about LaughFest’s March 8-18, 2012, lineup is available at laughfestgr.org/. Big names like Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin Nealon, and Martin Short headline the 60-person cast performing in 200 different locations – half of them free to the public. This year Gilda’s Club has scheduled even more family-friendly entertainers than they had last March.

‘Renew Blandford School’ a First for GRPS

November 15, 2011May 30, 2017Education, Environment

The $2.3 million campaign to put up a permanent school building for 60 sixth-graders in the Grand Rapids Public Schools will break ground in two ways next spring. Literally it will move turf for the LEED certified classroom building. Figuratively it makes history as the first public school in Grand Rapids to be paid for mostly by private funds.

The donors include $1.5 million from The Wege Foundation, $250,000 from GRPS Nutrition Services, $150,000 from the Steelcase Foundation, and $50,000 each from Bissell, Inc., and the Peter C. & Emajean Cook Foundation.

Since the 1970s, sixty GRPS students go to the Blandford School, named after the Blandford Nature Center next door, for their sixth-grade year. The expansive Nature Center is the outdoor classroom where they learn everything from botany to biology. The 60 students in two classes spend most of their time outside, including lunch, and complain when dangerously cold temperatures force them to stay indoors!

Blandford’s sixth-graders are known as BEEPS – Blandford Environmental Education Program. But they are also famous for the chicken each student gets to pick out in September and care for until school’s out in the spring. BEEPS use these chickens to practice Peter Wege’s vision of economicology by selling the eggs while protecting the environment in how they raise the hens. Economicology means balancing the economy with the ecology.

Blandford Nature Center’s director Annoesjka Steinman and Dr. Bill Laidlaw, grandfather of a BEEP, are pictured in front of the portable classroom that will be replaced by the new school.

Grand Rapids CC Pays Tribute To Peter Wege

November 2, 2011September 2, 2014Education, Environment

Four GRCC students shown above had the opportunity to thank Mr. Wege for all his support of education at Grand Rapids' highly respected community college. From the left: Ray Gant, sociology; Sean Berry, foreign affairs; Ledis Santos, dental; Brittnay Kozaklewicz, hospitality. — Four GRCC students shown above had the opportunity to thank Mr. Wege for all his support of education at Grand Rapids’ highly respected community college. From the left: Ray Gant, sociology; Sean Berry, foreign affairs; Ledis Santos, dental; Brittnay Kozaklewicz, hospitality.

October 11, 2011, was declared Peter Wege Night by Grand Rapids Community College’s Foundation. The program described Wege as a “Local Legend” and “Global Thinker” adding that the Grand Rapids native is “100% Homegrown.”

GRCC President Steven Ender, pictured above with his wife Karen and Peter, called Wege “Our third biggest sponsor of scholarships.” Teachers of Tomorrow is a scholarship program Peter Wege started in 1980. Of the six Es Peter Wege lives by – Education, Environment, Ethics, Empathy, Economy-Ecology or Economicology – education always come first for the visionary leader.

GRCC put together a video for the Peter Wege Night with testimonies from dignitaries including Mayor George Heartwell and Steelcase president Jim Hackett. Hackett gave Peter credit for leading Steelcase into environmental manufacturing long before green became mainstream.

“All Aboard!” Coming to John Ball Zoo

October 2, 2011May 30, 2017Community Service

In the fall of 2011, John Ball Park celebrated $12 million of planned upgrades with some of the key donors pictured here manning the groundbreaking shovels. This first dirt was thrown at the construction spot where elevated train tracks will be laid to carry visitors uphill onto zoo land that could never be used before.

By June 2012, the funicular will access 11 new hilltop acres for visitors to enjoy an observation deck, nature trail, and a “tree” house that can be rented out for private parties. The red funicular seen here is named for Bill and Bea Idema who gave $5 million toward the project, the largest single gift in the zoo’s history. Bea Idema is pictured with Al Hunting, a longtime friend and fellow donor to the zoo expansion.

The Wege Foundation’s contribution to the 2011 hilltop project is not the first. The John Ball Zoo’s location on the city’s west side gives it special meaning to Peter Wege because it’s where his mother Sophia Dubridge Wege grew up. Thirty years ago when the zoo needed support, Peter Wege helped fund improvements to the animals’ surroundings.

Ever the environmentalist, Wege was pleased that those rebuilt exhibits better match the animals’ natural habitats and keep the animals safer.

Peter Wege’s Farm Hosts Friends of Blandford

September 30, 2011September 2, 2014Education, Environment

Jamon Alexander, a former BEEP – or “Blandford Environmental Education Program” graduate – stands with Annoesjka Steinman (top left), Blandford Nature Center’s director, at Peter Wege’s Lowell farm on a perfect September evening. Jamon told the friends of Blandford that spending his sixth-grade at Blandford changed his life.

While Jamon was thriving in his outdoor classroom, his classmates back in his home school were heading in destructive directions. Jamon returned to his neighborhood Grand Rapids Public School for seventh grade, but by then he had higher educational aspirations and bigger visions for his own life than his old friends did.

Today Jamon Alexander is the Development Coordinator for the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital Foundation.

Mary Jane Dockeray (center photo), the visionary who founded Blandford Nature Center in the early 1960s and went on to start Blandford Environmental Education Program, a GRP School a decade later, stands by a poster of the Nature Center during the Wege farm party. The energetic natural scientist, who’s been Blandford’s driving force for half a century, still volunteers at the Center on Leonard in northwest Grand Rapids.

Former Grand Rapids Public Schools Superintendent Bert Bleke (bottom left) is the man who kept Blandford Nature Center open when vanishing funds threatened to close it down. As one of West Michigan’s most respected school administrators, Bert knew where to go for help.

Knowing about Peter Wege’s passion for education, it wasn’t a hard sell! Wege and Bleke teamed up to rescue Blandford Nature Center and convert it into its own independent non-profit. The Wege farm party was an outreach to friends of Blandford whose support is needed to continue changing the lives of BEEPs like Jamon Alexander.

Aquinas College Honors Triumvirate

September 15, 2011September 2, 2014Education

Aquinas’s Reflections Award this year went to three people who are not only long-time friends of the college’s, but they are also long-time friends themselves. Pictured here (on the left) at the ceremony September 19 are the three honorees: Ralph Hauenstein, Sister Aquinas Weber, and Peter Wege (seated) with Aquinas President Juan Oliverez.

This annual tribute is called the Reflections Award because the person selected each year “reflects” the values of Aquinas College by leading a life of commitment, vision, service, loyalty, and integrity. To celebrate Aquinas’s 125th anniversary, for the first time the college named three people as Reflections Award winners. Certainly these three 2011 honorees embody Reflections’ noble standards. Their commitments to Aquinas go back more than half a century, and include serving as trustees, inspiring students as teachers, and supporting the Catholic college with generous donations.

*** Kate Pew Wolters, pictured above with Peter, is the granddaughter of Henry Idema who co-founded Metal Office Furniture – today’s Steelcase – with Peter’s father Peter Martin Wege and David Hunting in 1912. These two pictured descendants of the MOF founders look forward to being part of next year’s festivities as Steelcase celebrates a full century in the office-furniture business.

President Oliverez is shown here with Father Duncan (above) as they present the Reflection Award to Ralph Hauenstein. A successful international businessman, Colonel Hauenstein was also a WW II hero as a top intelligence officer under General Dwight Eisenhower. Ralph Hauenstein will celebrate his 100th birthday this year.

Wege Surprise Honors Dr. Jonathan Bulkley

September 2, 2011September 2, 2014Education, Environment

To Peter Wege, Jonathan is not only a gifted scholar, teacher, and researcher, but he is also one of Peter’s closest friends. They first met in Lansing in 1991 when Dr. Bulkley and Greg Keoleian, his Ph.D student at the time, invited Peter to serve as the new NPPC’s first board chair. Thus began a professional collaboration and personal relationship between the academician in Ann Arbor and the business man in Grand Rapids that continues on.

Pictured above, next to the sign inviting guests to Dr. Bulkley’s retirement seminar in the Dana Building, is Ellen Satterlee, CEO of The Wege Foundation. While Jonathan planned the panel discussion given by his former students, he knew nothing about Ellen’s surprise announcement. She told the full auditorium of Jonathan’s family, friends, fans, and students that Peter Wege and The Wege Foundation were establishing the “Jonathan W. Bulkley Collegiate Professorship in Sustainable Systems Fund.”

The award will go to a faculty member who is actively advancing the research and educational mission of SNRE and the Center for Sustainable Systems. The honoree will be given the Sustainability Professorship named for Dr. Bulkley. Ellen’s second surprise from The Wege Foundation is an endowment to support Ph.D. students in the dual Ph.D. program between the University of Michigan’s School of Engineering and the SNRE.

Pictured above is the panel of five former graduate students spanning Professor Jonathan Bulkley’s 43 years with the University of Michigan’s SNRE. The five SNRE graduates from across the country shared their academic memories and environmental wisdom at Dr. Bulkley’s retirement ceremonies. From the left: SNRE Professor Steve Yaffee, Sari Sommarstrom, Ph.D., environmental consultant managing California’s first water trust; Phil Metzger, attorney for the U.S. EPA’s deputy administrator; Susan MacKenzie, Ph.D., teaching in the Environmental Studies Department at Colby College; Julie Zimmerman, Ph.D., associate joint professorship at Yale’s School of Engineering & Applied Sciences and the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Their individual testimonies on how Jonathan Bulkley shaped their lives had common themes. As teachers he taught them accessibility. “He was never too busy to meet.” They learned from him how to respect their own students. “Jonathan listened attentively to us…that built confidence and inspired creative problem solving.” “You taught us how to think.”

On a personal note, each spoke of Jonathan as a family role model in his commitment to his wife – and Mother Goose storyteller! – Trudy. Susan MacKenzie told the crowd that when she was pregnant as a grad student working out of a deteriorating room in the old Dana Building, she came in one Monday to find Dr. Bulkley had painted her office over the weekend. “He worried about the peeling paint.”

But the two most repeated words about Dr. Bulkley from his five former students and from the audience members who spoke seemed to summarize the man himself. “Honesty.” “Integrity.”