Eleven times a day someone in Kent County is abused in domestic violence, and almost always the victim is a woman and a mother. Injured and terrified, these women are desperate for a safe place to go with their children. Enter the YWCA with a 24-hour hotline, a warm bed, food, clothing, and counseling in their emergency shelter for women and their children in downtown Grand Rapids. In November 2014, the newly remodeled and expanded shelter was christened the YWCA Wege Sojourner House.
The Wege Foundation’s lead gift allowed the YWCA to increase the shelter’s residential capacity to 76 women and children. Formerly called the Domestic Crisis Center, the Y’s CEO Carla Blinkhorn explained the new name “sojourner” suggests a place “for rest and escape.” The Wege Sojourner House, in the old Wilcox mansion built in 1904, allows these traumatized women and children to find comfort in a safe place where they can heal and regroup.
Sojourner offers childcare in big bright rooms giving their moms a chance to work on their futures: look for a job, apply to school, find a new place to live. The Junior League of Grand Rapids put in a whole new backyard called the Wellness Adventure Yard where the children can play and explore and feel safe in a secure outdoor setting.
Five hundred women and children came to this shelter last year. The sad news is that more will run from domestic violence this year. The good news is that the YWCA Wege Sojourner House has more beds for them this year.
Two therapists who work with women and children who have sought refuge from domestic violence at the YWCA Wege Sojourner House pose on the leaded-windowed landing of the shelter, a three-story Heritage Hill home built over a century ago.Friends and supporters of the YWCA Wege Sojourner House, Pat Waring and Joan Krause–who with Deb Bailey co-chaired the capital campaign to renovate and expand the emergency shelter–sit in front of the fireplace in the former Wilcox home with the family’s hand-carved coat of arms above the mantel.
Gift to establish the nation’s first collegiate economicology program as envisioned by Peter Wege
Aquinas College and the Aquinas College Foundation today announced a $2.5 million gift from the Wege Foundation to establish the first-ever economicology program at the collegiate level in the nation; which the late Peter Wege envisioned for Aquinas. Peter Wege coined the term economicology to define the balance necessary between the economy and ecology. He believed in the importance of educating the public about how a prosperous economy depends on maintaining a healthy environment.
“The Wege Foundation has long been a generous friend and supporter of Aquinas College,” said Juan Olivarez, Aquinas president. “With this gift, Aquinas will honor Peter’s memory by pursuing his vision of developing a comprehensive economicology program centered on educating the leaders of tomorrow and taking active steps to promote these concepts. We are extremely grateful to the Wege Foundation for supporting Aquinas College with this generous grant.”
The money from the Wege Foundation grant will establish and develop Aquinas’ economicology program through six major areas. The main focus will be on creating and establishing a position for a dean of science and sustainability. Once selected, the dean will develop and implement a program for economicology at Aquinas.
“This deanship will be an integral part of setting the path for the future of academia at Aquinas,” said Gilda Gely, Aquinas provost. “Aquinas has set goals for this program focused on education, community and infrastructure, and this grant and the individual hired will help guide us as we develop the program around these pillars.”
Other areas to be funded by the Wege Foundation grant include:
• maintaining an academic master plan that best responds to the College’s strategic plan
• planning improvements for existing science facilities, including development of the Institute for Economicology
• further refining a plan to save energy through new construction and retrofitting existing structures
• creating and endowing a discretionary leadership fund, which promotes and recognizes innovation
• establishing a self-reinforcing green revolving fund that will support changes made to campus buildings and facilities that save energy and generate cost savings
The main principles of economicology include economics, environment, ecology, ethics, empathy and education, and directly relate to Aquinas’ culture, curriculum and values.
“Mr. Wege’s dream for Aquinas College was that it would be the ‘best Catholic liberal arts college of its size in the country,’ and he truly believed it is possible,” said Ellen Satterlee, CEO of the Wege Foundation. “I’m convinced that this grant will continue to move Aquinas College toward fulfilling Mr. Wege’s dream. The money gifted by the Wege Foundation will allow the College to begin weaving Mr. Wege’s philosophy of economicology into the fabric of its culture – so that it becomes part of the identity of Aquinas.”
Aquinas College has a long-standing relationship with the Wege Foundation. Throughout his lifetime, Peter Wege supported and advocated for Aquinas College. He helped Aquinas purchase its current campus and served as a trustee for 13 years. In 1959, he took a leave of absence from Steelcase Corporation to serve as a business consultant for the development campaign and construction of Aquinas’ Albertus Magnus Hall of Science. Additionally, he contributed to a number of on-campus projects including the Wege Student Center, named in his honor; the Jarecki Center for Advanced Learning; and the Aquinas College Performing Arts Center.
Through the years, his work for Aquinas was recognized in a number of ways, including the following awards and recognitions: an honorary degree in 1959, Distinguished Service Award in 1975, Norbert J. Hruby Emeritus award in 1991, induction into the Aquinas College Hall of Fame in 2002, and the Reflection Award in 2011. The annual Peter M. Wege Pro Am golf outing is named in his honor.
About the Aquinas College Foundation: The mission of the Aquinas College Foundation is to advance the College’s reputation, growth and prosperity and to identify and secure the resources necessary to fulfill the mission and vision of Aquinas College. The Foundation Board of Directors will primarily focus on growing the College’s endowment and supporting current and future capital campaigns.www.aquinas.edu/foundation
In 2009 Blandford Nature Center had to reinvent itself from a tax-payer funded organization into an independent non-profit with Annoesjka Steinman as the first president. Annoesjka proved up to the new challenge by successfully carrying on the Center’s long-time mission as an educational wildlife mecca, but on a whole new financial basis.
The new president of Blandford in the wildlife-rescue room shows visitors the owls and the turtle in the aquarium.
Five years later, Annoesjka has handed off the Blandford presidency to Jason Meyer whom she mentored in his previous job as the Executive Director of the Fenner Conservancy in Lansing. Jason is already on the job with his three children in school next door at Frost Elementary.
The new Blandford president–an Eagle Scout among other impressive resume details–gives his friend and predecessor Annoesjka full credit for her leadership in converting Grand Rapids’ beloved Nature Center from city-school support into a non-profit. “We have new challenges,” Jason Meyer says, “but Annoesjka has paved the way.”
When Jason Meyer graduated from Purdue in 1999, he won the trifecta of top awards from the University’s Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. Meyer was named the Department’s Outstanding Senior, the Outstanding Wildlife senior, and given the Stanley Coulter Leadership Award.
Meyer went on to earn his Masters in Purdue’s School of Forestry & Natural Resources. And this year the Association of Nature Center Administrators, a national organization, named Jason Meyer the ANCA’s Outstanding New Leader in 2014.
In the fifteen years between those prestigious honors, at Purdue Meyer taught migrant farm workers science and social studies to prepare for their GEDs; he worked with land owners and foresters in California to prevent wildfires. And as the program manager for the San Bernardino National Forest’s Children’s Forest, Meyer ran a youth program on forest management, restoration, and trail maintenance.
Blandford’s new CEO has also published articles in national magazines, including the Journal of Environmental Education. Over his four years in Lansing at the Fenner Conservancy from 2010 to 2014, Meyer increased private funding to the nature center by 539%.
This spring when Annoesjka Steinman needed a change after five years of long commutes from her Muskegon home to Blandford Nature Center, she called her friend and protégé in Lansing. The timing was right for Jason Meyer too, and the rest is history.
Blandford Nature Center volunteer Joan Coates holds one of the herbs from the Center’s garden for her small visitors to smell. Last year volunteers like Joan, who was pruning the garden, contributed 12,000 hours to Blandford.Pictured here on one of Blandford Nature Center’s trails is a group of students and teachers from Alllendale Christian Elementary School with a Blandford volunteer as their guide. Last year nine thousand school children toured the Center’s 143 acres of woods inside the city of Grand Rapids.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Philanthropist Peter Wege has bestowed $1 million on the Grand Rapids Symphony.
Wege, who underwrote the orchestra’s Grammy Award-nominated album, “Inventions & Alchemy,” plus its accompanying DVD featuring harpist Deborah Henson-Conant, bequeathed the gift from his personal estate.
The former chairman of Steelcase, Inc., who died July 7, was a longtime supporter of arts and culture across West Michigan.
At Friday night’s opening of its 2014-15 Pops Series in DeVos Performance Hall, the Grand Rapids Symphony unveiled the award for its endowment fund, which currently stands between $16 million and $17 million prior to Wege’s gift.
Wege’s philanthropy was focused on his love for people, said associate conductor John Varineau.
“He loved to take care of people, nurture their talents and provide exceptional cultural offerings to enhance this community’s quality of life,” Varineau said. “His love for his hometown and his dedication to local causes has been a big reason for the success of the Grand Rapids Symphony’s 85 years.”
Wege’s ties to the Grand Rapids Symphony date back decades. He was a longtime season subscriber and a major donor year after year to the orchestra’s annual fund. When the organization moved to new offices in 2004, the former chairman of Steelcase, Inc., helped Steelcase provide all new office furniture.
Wege was the primary sponsor for the Grand Rapids Symphony’s “Piano Pops 2” compact disc featuring pianist and Grand Rapids native Rich Ridenour.
The Wege Foundation underwrote the Grand Rapids Symphony’s associate conductor chair, which lead Varineau to jokingly refer to Wege as “Dad,” to which Wege would call Varineau “Sonny” in return.
Previously, Wege had contributed to the orchestra’s Legacy of Excellence Campaign, a long-term effort to build a $40 million endowment for the Grand Rapids Symphony.
Last year, the philanthropists Rich and Helen DeVos pledged $20 million for the campaign, and another $12 million in future gifts had been pledged at the time of the announcement in May 2013.
The $1 million bequest was unexpected, according to Peter Perez, chairman of the symphony’s board of directors.
“Peter Wege understood the vital importance of local arts organizations like our orchestra,” Perez said. “He helped encourage and support the work of people and organizations across our community. His leadership has enhanced West Michigan’s quality of life through his dedicated commitment over the course of many years.”
Last season, the Grand Rapids Symphony’s endowment fund provided the orchestra with a little over 8 percent of its total revenue for the year.
Specific uses for the gift will be decided at a later date.
“Peter Wege asked us to assess how the gift can be best used,” said symphony president Peter Kjome.
Education and outreach were among the causes Wege valued in his lifetime.
If you look at all of the programs meant to broaden the base of the Grand Rapids Symphony, such as the annual “Symphony with Soul” concert or educational concerts, you’ll find the Wege Foundation logo, Varineau said.
“Peter was passionate about making sure the arts are truly for everyone,” Varineau said.
The 10th Conference was held September 9-11, 2014, in the city where HOW was born: Grand Rapids, Michigan. In May 2004, the late Peter M. Wege turned his dream for saving the five Great Lakes into action when he invited seventy-plus national experts in environmental policy, science, and economics to a conference at Steelcase, Inc., the office furniture company founded by his father in 1912.
In his invitational letter, Peter Wege summarized his vision for that founding conference: Our objective is to collaboratively reach consensus on a policy statement for restoring the Great Lakes ecosystem. We will focus not on the problems, but the solutions. He asked the attending experts to develop a powerful statement on the policy reforms needed to begin healing the Great Lakes.
Over three long days of work sessions, lively debate, and skilled facilitation, those first HOW attendees summarized the three major threats to the Great Lakes: invasive species, pollution, and threatened water quality. Collectively they considered keeping out exotic species a top priority because once foreign aquatic species enter the Great Lakes, they can rarely be eradicated.
Wege called the final policy statement that came out of the first HOW conference, “The Magna Carta of the Great Lakes.” Ten years later at their annual conference, the HOW Great Lakes Coalition could celebrate more than $1.6 billion in federal funds to protect and restore the lakes in over 2,000 restoration projects.
These major leaps forward in meeting Wege’s dream of “saving the Great Lakes” are a direct result of a $20 billion package of proposed laws called the Great Lakes Collaboration Implementation spearheaded.
Now called the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the federal legislation named the very problems the original HOW conference had identified as most serious. Stop the introduction of invasive Annual Healing Our Waters Great Lakes Restoration species. Prevent sewage contamination and toxic pollution. Restore wildlife habitat.
Peter M. Wege would always call Healing Our Waters “the most important single project of my life as an environmental activist since starting the Wege Foundation in 1967.” The attached tribute video to Peter M. Wege’s legacy on restoring the Great Lakes is visual confirmation of the astounding success of his “most important single project.”
Andrew Goodwillie stands beside a photograph of his late grandfather Peter M. Wege and Terri McCarthy, Vice-President of programs for The Wege Foundation, at the Healing Our Waters Conference’s luncheon honoring Mr. Wege. The accompanying tribute video was shown at the luncheon.
St. Cecilia says they plan to dedicate next week’s annual Great Artist Gala to Mr. Wege in recognition of the gift.
“Everyone at St. Cecilia Music Center is beyond thrilled with this news and we feel so very privileged to be remembered by Mr. Wege in this way,” said Cathy Holbrook, Executive Director of St. Cecilia Music Center in a press release. “When Mr. Wege’s daughter, Mary Nelson, called to tell me this news I was flabbergasted. Mr. Wege had been a long-time generous supporter of SCMC but we were not expecting a bequest from him. This is the largest single donation SCMC has ever received in our 131 years history. We are so grateful to Mr. Wege and the Wege family.”
St. Cecilia Music Center’s Great Artist Gala takes place next week on September 18, 2014. The concert on the 18th brings 20-time Grammy winner and jazz pianist Chick Corea with his band the Vigil to Grand Rapids.
Tickets for the Great Artist Gala dedicated to Peter Wege can be purchased by calling St. Cecilia Music Center at 616-459-2224 or visiting the box office at 24 Ransom Ave. NE. or online at www.scmc-online.org.
America’s Public schools are the entry point for success, and teachers lead the way. But they can’t do it alone. Students are with them only seven hours a day during the week. Parents take over the teaching the rest of the time. And every educational study ever conducted on how much children learn at home reaches the same conclusion. The more parents read to, with, and in front of their children, the better students their children become.
The Wege Foundation supports a program run by the Literacy Center of West Michigan that helps parents improve their own language skills so they can become better teachers to their children.
The Family Literacy Program partners with Head Start to find parents struggling with literacy who want to read better. The parents sign up for the Program knowing children from reading homes progress faster in school, and they want that for their children too. This year F.L.P. volunteers are working one-on-one with 50 of these motivated parent-learners for two hours a week.
They meet in public settings, most often libraries. The Center is looking for more tutors who will step up for the parents on the waiting list eager to become better readers for themselves and their children.
The above video is a moving testimony from one of the parents whose life has been changed through the Family Literacy Program. This mother of five children is helping her children succeed in school because she worked hard to become better educated herself.
She reflects the Literary Center’s vision of “Education. Expertise. Excellence.” A motto not far from Peter Wege’s call to “Educate! Educate! Educate!”
left to right – Jessica Young, Nathan Mabie, Elena Barone, Elizabeth Juarez, and Amy Jensema. On the right is Dan Drust, Manager of the Family Literacy Program. The Americorps members teach in the Schools of Hope program, partnering with the Grand Rapids Public Schools and Godwin Schools.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Peter M. Wege lived to see his hopes and dreams come true.
The Grand Rapids philanthropist lived to be 94 years old, so he had the time. The retired chairman of Steelcase, Inc., also had the money.
The Wege Foundation’s $20 million gift – the largest, single gift he ever gave – launched the $75 million Grand Rapids Art Museum, which opened in 2007.
Most of all, Wege, who died Monday, July 7, had the passion and interest in things both great and small, such as bankrolling the world’s first art museum to win LEED Gold certification for environmental sustainability as well as for donating works of art by Frederic Remington, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Jasper Johns and supporting temporary exhibitions such as “Masterpieces of American Landscape Painting” from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
“Grand Rapids was very lucky to have him here,” said Dana Friis-Hansen, president and CEO of the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
Wege’s legacy of support for education, environmentalism, health care, human services, and arts and culture, spanning some 50 years, can be seen most anywhere in Grand Rapids, in West Michigan and beyond.
Aquinas College officials estimate Wege’s contributions to the private, Roman Catholic college in Grand Rapids surpassed $46.5 million over the years. He launched the Healing Our Waters Coalition with a $2.5 million gift a decade ago to help protect the Great Lakes.
Wege wrote books, organized seminars and coined the word “Economicology,” combining the words “economy” and “ecology.”
“He really cared about the inner city, where they didn’t have fresh vegetables, where they didn’t have land, where they didn’t have enough vegetation,” said Juan Olivarez, president of Aquinas College. “He really made us think about sustainability in new ways.
Co-chairman of the sculpture committee formed in the 1960s to commission a major work of public art for Grand Rapids’ new city-county complex downtown, Wege was a major player in bringing Alexander Calder’s stabile, “La Grande Vitesse,” to Grand Rapids in 1969.
Nearly 30 years later, the amateur painter and photographer was a major benefactor of the Grand Rapids Art Museum’s landmark exhibition, “Perugino: Master of the Italian Renaissance,” in 1997 which drew the attention of such publications as the New York Times and put the museum and the city on the cultural map of the United States.
“His interest and passion for the arts was both inspired and inspiring,” said Joseph Becherer, chief curator and vice president of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, who was curator of the exhibition of work by Pietro di Perugino that brought 15th and 16th century paintings to the United States that had never before left Italy.
At Meijer Gardens, named for benefactor Fred Meijer, founder of Meijer, Inc., you’ll also find the Wege Nature Trail outdoors and the Wege Library indoors.
One of the oldest images in Meijer Gardens’ archives is a 1993 photo of Wege and Meijer, standing in a grassy field of what would become Michigan’s second largest-drawing cultural destination.
“Fred was sharing his early vision for the organization, and Peter, supportively, is smiling in admiration,” said David Hooker, president and CEO of Meijer Gardens. “Early on, Peter Wege believed in dreams – Fred Meijer’s dreams – of what would become this great institution, and his support never diminished.”
Wege’s support of causes and organizations was deep as well as long lasting. Aquinas College will remember Wege as its “guardian angel,” in the words of Olivarez.
Wege helped Aquinas College acquire its current campus and served on its board of trustees for 13 years. In 1959, he took a year’s leave of absence from Steelcase to consult and lead the campaign to build Albertus Magnus Hall of Science at college.
The Steelcase executive launched the Wege Foundation in 1967, giving its first gift to Aquinas College. A $5 million gift in 1995 for the college’s endowment remains the largest, single gift in the college’s history.
“He has been here all these many years, and he has helped Aquinas grow and prosper in good times and bad times,” Olivarez said.
Grand Rapids Public School benefited from his commitment for environmental education.
A $1.5 million contribution from the Wege Foundation got kids out of portable classrooms and into “a beautiful, green-built building” to serve as Blandford School, according to Grand Rapids Public Schools Superintendent Teresa Weatherall Neal.
“His legacy will live on through the students who learned to value the environment at City High Middle School, Blandford, and the Center for Economicology, which was named after him and the term he coined,” Neal said.
Environmentalism and sustainability were lifelong passions.
Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring” helped launch the modern environmental movement, and Wege wasn’t far behind.
“What was so unique about Peter was that he was a voice from the business community,” said Rachel Hood, executive director of West Michigan Environmental Action Council. “If you think about the context of that movement, it was largely about pesticides, and that was largely about business versus environment.”
“Peter’s voice was unique in saying that business and environment can work together,” Hood said.
A poet, a college athlete at the University of Michigan, and a World War II Army Air Corps pilot, Wege had a charm and a personal touch.
The Wege Foundation spearheaded Grand Rapids Ballet’s $6.2 million, 300-seat Peter Martin Wege Theatre, named not for himself, but for his father. But he also took a personal interest in the company’s dancers.
“One of my fondest memories of him is his love and enthusiasm for the company’s ballet, ‘Flickers,’ recalled retired dancer Attila Mosolygo, who danced the ballet inspired by the silent films of Charlie Chaplin at a birthday celebration of Wege.
“I remember that he loved it and was very appreciative,” said Mosolygo, who today is artistic director of Grand Rapids Ballet’s Junior Company. “Afterward, he gave me a handshake and said how much he always enjoyed Chaplin and his movies.”
The Wege Foundation underwrote the Grand Rapids Symphony’s associate conductor position for more than 15 years, which inspired associate conductor John Varineau jokingly to call Wege, “Dad,” and led Wege, in turn, to call Varineau, “Son.”
“Peter Wege was a lot of fun to be around,” Varineau said.
At a Grand Rapids Symphony BRAVO! Awards dinner honoring contributors and patrons of the orchestra, Varineau conducted the orchestra in a performance of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” with Wege narrating.
“It was a hoot because Peter was going to do it his way,” Varineau recalled. “No matter what the conductor – me – said.”
Grand Rapids Press and MLive reporters Brian McVicar, Monica Scott and Jonathan Van Zytveld contributed to this report.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Peter Melvin Wege loved giving away his money.
And give it away he did — millions of dollars in grants large and small — a fortune he had amassed as the former chairman and largest stockholder of Steelcase, Inc., the office furniture company his father founded.
Wege, of East Grand Rapids, died Monday, July 7, at the age of 94, having made an indelible mark on Grand Rapids and much of the world.
Wege (pronounced Weg-ee) was an unconventional industrialist, sometimes at odds with the area’s other prominent business leaders. He wrote poetry and supported liberal, as well as conservative, candidates and causes. Saving the environment was his greatest passion.
“I want to be remembered as one of the people who tried to wake up the country on the environmental problems,” he said in November 2004, after sponsoring a nationwide conference of environmental leaders aimed at restoring the Great Lakes.
“I’m doing it for my children and my grandchildren,” he said. “It’s got to be taken seriously this time.”
His gifts ranged from $60,000 to renovate and stock a library in Chase, a tiny Lake County community, to more than $20 million for the new Grand Rapids Art Museum, which opened in 2007.
“He gets more pleasure out of the small gifts he gives than the great big ones,” Ellen Satterlee, the Wege Foundation’s CEO, once said.
When the art museum’s board offered to name the new museum after him in exchange for his gift, Wege declined, although it later christened the area outside the building the Peter M. Wege plaza.
“That’s not his way of doing things,” Kate Pew Wolters, co-chair of the museum’s fundraising campaign, said at the time. Mr. Wege was motivated by “having a quiet impact,” she said, “of using his resources to make change, not with the thought that he’s going to get a lot of recognition for it.”
After giving millions to Saint Mary’s Health Care (now Mercy Health Saint Mary’s) he reluctantly agreed a new building could be named The Peter M. Wege Health and Learning Center, but privately said it was named not for him but for his late father, Peter Martin Wege.
Peter Melvin Wege was born into privilege Feb. 19, 1920, in Grand Rapids eight years after his father co-founded the Metal Office Furniture Co., forerunner of Steelcase Inc.
During the difficult pregnancy before his birth, his mother, Sophia Louise, a devout Catholic, prayed, “Oh, Lord, if you help me out, I’ll devote my child to the Blessed Mary.”
“I got stigmatized right there,” Wege once joked.
His mother instilled in him a deep religious faith, which in later years would guide his philanthropy.
As a teenager, he attended the San Diego Army and Navy Academy, then in 1940 enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he set a record for the javelin throw, which stood for 32 years. He interrupted his education to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps in December 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbor. He became a transport pilot, ferrying aircraft from one place to another during World War II.
It was in that capacity that he became concerned about the damage pollution was inflicting on people and their planet. He often told about piloting an airplane into Pittsburgh in 1943. The smog was so thick, he could not see to land.
After the war, Mr. Wege spent six years as a salesman for the company his father founded, loading his station wagon with Steelcase chairs and other supplies and heading across the country. As the founder’s only son, he was the company’s largest shareholder, and he rose through the management ranks to become chairman.
But he never forgot the smog that shrouded Pittsburgh, a sign of prosperity in those years before the environmental movement.
“Pittsburgh’s smog was my introduction to environmental pollution,” he once wrote.
In 1967, Wege created The Wege Foundation and built its mission on five pillars: education, environment, arts and culture, health care, and human services. He gave its first gift to Aquinas College and remained closely tied to the Catholic college until his death. In 1969, he founded the Center for Environmental Study in Grand Rapids.
At his urging, Steelcase went public, allowing him in 1998 to sell $214 million of his stock, most of which he gave to his foundation. In 2000, he resigned as the company’s vice chairman to work full-time on his foundation. But he continued to use his economic leverage to push Steelcase and other companies to recycle and take other environmentally responsible steps.
Many of his gifts, even those not directly tied to environmental causes, came with the requirement that they be environmentally responsible. He insisted that the buildings his money helped construct be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified, meaning they were energy efficient and met other green standards.
“He was on to green building when nobody knew what LEED meant,” Satterlee said in 2010.
Inspired by his example, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, which opened its $75 million building in 2007, became the first newly-built art museum in the world to achieve the top gold-level LEED certification.
“The gold standard was always our goal,” Wege said afterward.
He coined the word “economicology,” combining the words “economy” and “ecology.”
“There’s no doubt you can make money and prevent pollution,” he explained.
In 1998, he published a book, “Economicology: The Eleventh Commandment,” offering his premise that a healthy economy and healthy ecology are compatible.
In 2010, he published a sequel, “Economicology II,” coinciding with his 90th birthday in February.
In between, in the spring of 2004, he sponsored the “Healing Our Waters” conference in Grand Rapids, a meeting of some 70 environmentalists and scientists to develop a plan for dealing with what they saw as the three primary threats to the Great Lakes: invasive species, declining water quality and concentrations of toxic sediment.
“The lakes,” Wege said at the time, “are our life support system, and we’ve got to treat them that way. People take it for granted. We have to protect them.”
The result was a report, “Healing Our Waters: An Agenda for Great Lakes Restoration” — a “Magna Carta for Great Lakes restoration,” Wege called it — urging the federal government to take the lead on a massive, $30 billion dollar restoration of the big lakes.
Robert Kennedy Jr., senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, called Wege “One of my heroes. I just treasure his wisdom and his advice.”
Carl Pope, former executive director of the Sierra Club, said: “Mr. Wege’s doing his part. I think this is a test of whether we’re as committed to this as Mr. Wege is.”
As it turned out, the rest of the country wasn’t as committed. Wege didn’t live to see his beloved lakes restored to their natural state.
Undeterred, he continued his activism. Over the years, he donated numerous tracts of land to nature conservancies, gave the National Wildlife Federation $1 million to create a national schoolyard habitat program to teach young children about nature, more than $1 million to protect the Muskegon River watershed and an estimated $1.5 million to buy ecologically sensitive forest in Costa Rica.
He gave millions to the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources, including a $1.5 million gift in 2011 for a graduate student fellowship and a professorship in sustainability. He gave millions more to Michigan State University, Grand Valley State University and other colleges for environmental programs. At his urging, Aquinas College created a degree in sustainable business.
But Wege didn’t limit his giving to environmental causes. The many organizations that benefited from his generosity include: The Grand Rapids Symphony, the Grand Rapids Ballet Company, the American Cancer Society, Saint Mary’s Health Care and countless schools, elementary through college.
In 2008, at the dedication of the new Cathedral Square Center, the headquarters of the Grand Rapids Catholic Diocese at 360 S. Division Ave. downtown, Wege stood and pointed across the street to the building at 359 S. Division Ave.
“I was born and raised in that third floor 88 years ago,” he said.
Then he stunned the crowd by pledging to give whatever was needed to complete the $22 million project, a promise that could have totaled close to $4 million on that day.
Despite all of that, he tended to keep a lower profile than some of the area’s other philanthropists. He preferred to keep his personal life private, including the fact that he was married and divorced seven times. He had a sensitive, literary side, as seen in his poems many drawn from nature:
If mankind could only realize
That we all are a small part of the whole,
And we fit in the overall plan
Like a glove fits the hand.
He professed that his personal wealth was only as good as what it could accomplish, a sentiment he learned from his father, who “felt that the accumulation of wealth was not in the interest of anybody,” Mr. Wege said in a 1999 interview. “When you had enough for your retirement, you certainly should be generous with the community.”
Some years ago, he made it clear he planned to leave his entire estate to his foundation so it could continue functioning after his death.
“I’m going to give away a lot,” he once said, “and there will be a lot left over.”
Despite his advancing age, he continued running his foundation well into his 80s. He once said he wanted the foundation’s board, composed mainly of his children, to become more active in the decision making, but it soon became clear he wasn’t interested in relinquishing control.
“It was obvious that wasn’t what he wanted,” his oldest son, Peter Martin Wege II once said. “All we do is say, ‘Great job, Dad. Keep it up.’ He keeps saying he’s going to retire, but he never does. We don’t believe him anyway. This is what keeps him alive and keeps him going.”
But age eventually forced him to slow down. In 2004, he considered moving the foundation offices to a farmhouse he had restored near Lowell, but decided it would be better, given his age, if he kept it in his rambling East Grand Rapids home overlooking Reeds Lake.
That same year, he was hospitalized briefly due to an irregular heartbeat.
Still, he kept the foundation’s small staff busy, leaving them stacks of material to read when they arrived at the office each morning, assigning them projects to look into, almost as if he was driven to make a difference before he died.
Terri McCarthy, the foundation’s vice president in charge of programs, once told him: “If you stopped today, you could look back and say, ‘I don’t need to do one more thing,’”
Mr. Wege responded: “Oh, my goodness. I still have so much to do.”
Wege is survived by seven children: Mary Goodwillie Nelson, Susan Carter, Peter Martin Wege II, Christopher Henry Wege, Diana Wege Sherogan, Johanna Osman, Jonathan Michael Wege. He also is survived by 17 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
If you look at all of the programs meant to broaden the base of the Grand Rapids Symphony, such as the annual “Symphony with Soul” concert or educational concerts, you’ll find the Wege Foundation logo, Varineau said.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Peter M. Wege lived to see his hopes and dreams come true.