Page 15 – The Wege Foundation

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.”

New GRAM Leader Having Fun Already

August 2, 2011September 2, 2014Arts & Culture

Dana Friis-Hansen is pictured at the welcoming reception with Ellen Satterlee, CEO of The Wege Foundation. Peter M. Wege made the major gift that led to the award-winning new Grand Rapids Art Museum.

Dana Friis-Hansen left his job as Executive Director of the Austin Museum of Art this summer to take over as CEO of the Grand Rapids Art Museum. In an interesting confluence of art museums, GRAM’s new chief executive will be both exhibitor and presenter during this fall’s ArtPrize. Among the 32 ArtPrize entries to be housed at GRAM will be one Friis-Hansen helped create for the Austin Museum called “The Mona Lisa Project” by photographer Rino Pizzzi.

The GRAM board and the community had the chance to welcome the 50-year-old Friis-Hansen at an open reception July 15. The new director told his audience that the people he’d met here during interviews and the exciting visions they have for GRAM’s future helped him decide to leave Austin for Grand Rapids. And the museum itself, the nation’s first LEED Gold Certified museum opened in 2007, completed the irresistible offer.

For the Massachsett’s native, GRAM’s flexible, open spaces, its environmentally progressive design, and its downtown location make it an ideal community art museum. Friis-Hansen has already taken advantage of the expansive entrance by showing “upside down” films on the outdoor porch ceiling. The first night it didn’t take long for people to spot the movies and come lie down to watch them.

That’s typical of Dana Friis-Hansen’s creative approach to making GRAM a family gathering place. In Austin he created The Family Lab bringing in experts from biologists to chefs who helped him expand the boundaries of what an “art museum” is.

Economicology Students Share Costa Rica’s pura vida

June 30, 2011September 2, 2014Education, Environment

In April 2011, eight students and two educators from the Grand Rapids Public Schools’ City High/Middle School spent over a week in Costa Rica on a trip that, in the students’ own written words, had a profound impact on their lives.

The eight young men and women from the Center for Economicology, sponsored by The Wege Foundation, chose Costa Rica because it is recognized as the most environmentally progressive country in the world. The theme of the Grand Rapids travelers was “pura vida,” the Costa Rican motto for “pure life.”

The trip leaders, Spanish teacher Patricia Osborn and Assistant Principal Ryan Huppert, defined the trip’s main goals as immersing the students in the Spanish language, exposing them to the Costa Rican culture, teaching them about tropical ecology, and showing them sustainable practices.

The photographs in the attached link to their blog show the breadth of their learning experiences, from sustainable farming to producing geo-thermal energy to spotting howler monkeys to eating dinner with gracious Costa Rican families. The students even found time to meet with Peace Corps volunteers and paint a village school a cheery blue.

To me pura vida means community, family, and happiness, wrote Lindsay Klomparens in her journal. Take nothing for granted. Make the best choices not only for yourself, but also for those around you.

About this Central American country with over 25% of its land in permanent conservation, Nick Maodushpitzer wrote: The Costa Rican people’s…dedication to improving the planet for future generations is shown in the work that is done here, not just what is written on paper. (Costa Ricans) should be a model for how the rest of the world operates.

In almost poetic terms, Carl Uzarski described his first taste of raw sugar from chewing on a sugar cane to get the juice out. Not an intense sweetness, Carl wrote, but, instead, it was watery with a gentle sweetness.

Grant Kammer saw the “pura vida” in the contrasting levels of consumerism between the Costa Rican people and Americans. I love our culture as a U.S. citizen, Grant wrote, and I am proud to be a part of it, but the need for materials, the need for things is just appallingly unnecessary.

Summarizing for what the Costan Rican experience had taught them, Nick wrote, We, as students eager to learn, are the seeds of change…(we) understand the seeds will not blossom in one day…and slowly we will see that our small ideas can create big dividends for our world.

Leaving Costa Rica and pura vida, Hannah Tripp wrote, We will miss waking up to the sounds of the rainforest, the silly dogs that followed us everywhere, the kind town, Pablo and his machete (used to whack a palm tree and teach students to make a salad using the palm core), the amazing birds, and all the fun we had.

Please check out the economicology students’ blogs and the photos they took on their Costa Rican adventure. http://costaricanpegasi.blogspot.com