Lena Elizabeth Selma Rader Meijer

from Seasons - Spring 2022 | Vol. 13(2)

by Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park

Yinka Shonibare CBE Planets In My Head

Flowers and family. Plants and people. Gardens and grandchildren—everyone’s grandchildren! These are among the many things Lena Meijer cherished most.

By extension, and by no simple coincidence, these are also many of the beloved characteristics that define the heart of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

In truth, to combine Fred Meijer’s passion for sculpture with Lena’s love of flowers, plants and gardens, you more easily understand the unique concept of Meijer Gardens. When you also consider their shared interest in people of every background and life experience, that concept defines the institution that annually welcomes 600,000-plus visitors, from across the country and around the world.

Perhaps no one was more delighted and surprised by the international renown and success of Meijer Gardens than Lena herself. Such sentiments stemmed in part from the fact that the present reality of the organization with which she will be forever linked seems so far from her birth and childhood in the small farming community of Amble, Michigan.

On May 14, 1919, Lena Elizabeth Selma Rader was born on the family homestead, one mile east of Amble, Michigan, in the upstairs bedroom of the house her father had built. George Rader had come to America from Germany in 1893, at age 16, where he began working as a lumberjack. Eventually, he was able to buy 40 acres in Winfield Township and become a farmer.

While attending the Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Amble, George met Mary Lutterloh, also of German ancestry. They married in 1915. Along with her older brother Herman, Lena spent her childhood on a hardworking family farm. Though English was spoken in the nearby village, her parents spoke German at home and she became fluent in both languages.

To the delight of many, Lena remained close to both her German ancestry and the circumstances of her early life. She so enjoyed conversing and corresponding with German-speaking guests and artists at Meijer Gardens, in the beloved language of her parents. She never missed the opportunity to decorate the Germany Tree in the celebrated University of Michigan Health–West Christmas & Holiday Traditions exhibition and reminisce about the decorations and traditions of Christmases past but not forgotten. It had been Lena—working with her daughter-in-law and some friends—who started the exhibition.

The ever-charming Michigan’s Farm Garden at Meijer Gardens, however, is likely the most tangible connection to Lena’s rural past. The house is a three-quarter scale replica of the one her father built, and the expansive diorama of a working American farm is to be discerned in every season. Both Lena and her mother maintained gardens for produce, with touches of beauty in a few flowering plants and shrubs. The rhubarb cultivar grown at Michigan’s Farm Garden today has its origins in the garden of Lena’s mother.

For the Rader family, the realities of farm life were equally demanding and character building. There were cows to milk twice a day, starting at five in the morning, with only a kerosene lantern lighting the barn. Lena would often rouse the rooster, who would then make his announcement to the world from his favorite fence post.

“By 9 or 10, I was pretty good at milking cows,” she noted in an interview. “I had my own three-legged stool, and the minute I sat down, Mutsy, one of the barn cats, would be right there. I got so I could squirt the milk into his mouth from six to eight feet away.”

Lena graduated in 1937 from Lakeview High School, where she displayed significant athletic talents. Although she enrolled at Central Michigan University with an eye on becoming a schoolteacher, the Great Depression was in full swing. She finally decided she should go to work instead, and for several years found herself waiting on customers at a bank in Lakeview.

Then came a phone call that would change her life.

“It was a Friday night,” she recalled, “and we had just finished supper. The day had been unusually hot. I was helping Mother bake some huckleberry pies for Sunday dinner, when the phone rang.

“I picked up the phone and said ‘Hello.’ A voice with a heavy Dutch accent answered: ‘This is Henry Meijer, and I would like to talk to Lena Rader.’” Two of her high school friends, who worked at the fledgling Meijer Thrift Market in Greenville, had told their employer glowing stories about Lena, urging him to offer her a job.

Even though they had never met, and the terms of her employment were not discussed during that brief phone conversation, Lena accepted the job offer. This meant she would be leaving the farm and moving to the city—and into a whole new way of life. Eventually, she discovered she would be paid $12 a week.

Lena’s orderly mind, and her experience at the Lakeview Bank, allowed her to straighten out the sometimes-haphazard bookkeeping practices at the first Meijer store, where bills and invoices were often simply pinned to the wall.

She worked at the store four years before she and Fred had their first date, which wasn’t exactly a formal arrangement. Lena asked Fred whether he’d like to come to a community barn dance. Initially, he turned her down, thinking it wasn’t proper to date an employee. About five minutes later, he changed his mind and accepted.

From that first date, Fred later admitted, he was determined to marry Lena.

Because the Meijer family didn’t take wages at the Greenville store, they simply got in touch with the head bookkeeper, Henry Hoy, when they needed money. One day, Fred took out an amount Henry thought was suspiciously large. When Lena came in to work the next day, Henry asked to see her finger. “I knew it!” he exclaimed, smiling at the sparkling diamond ring.

Fred and Lena were married at the Rader farmhouse, 23 miles from Greenville, in 1946.

Though the two of them had not known each other as children, they grew up with many things in common. Both developed a strong sense of commitment to their families, knowing even as children they made important contributions to their families’ livelihoods. Both shouldered responsibilities beyond their years and worked extremely hard, understanding the rewards that came with hard-won accomplishments. In many ways, the eventual success that gave rise to Meijer Inc. and, by extension, their many transformative philanthropic endeavors, was shaped early in the lives of Fred and Lena—respectively and collectively.

Both were exposed to two languages at home: German and English for Lena; Dutch and English for Fred. Both exhibited talents in music: Fred as a clarinetist, violinist, and singer; Lena as trumpeter, pianist, and organist. It is quite clear their lifelong curiosity, flexibility, intelligence, and determination were in large part formed in the fertile soil of those early farm years and gave rise to significant cultural endeavors, foremost of which would be Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

After marrying Fred, Lena continued to work in the family business—now without a paycheck— and kept up her involvement well into her first pregnancy. In February 1952, Fred was hard at work preparing for the opening of the company’s sixth store, its third in Grand Rapids, on the corner of Michigan and Fuller.

1. Lena holding farm kittens at the Amble, Michigan, family farm where she grew up. As a child she milked cows, collected eggs and planted her own garden.

2. Lena Rader, Greenville Thrift Market, 1942. Also pictured are Hendrik and Fred Meijer.

3. Lena Rader began working as a cashier at the Greenville Thrift Market in 1941. She also helped organize the Meijer family’s books. 4. Lena seated at a card table in her and Fred’s living room. She routinely laid out ads at home, at least until their first child was born.

5. Lena sits for artist Philip Grausman as he works on his sculpture Lena Meijer in 2002.

6. Lena and Fred surrounded by friends and family in the Lena Meijer Children’s Garden.

Meijer family portrait, 1973. Left to right: Doug, Fred, Lena, Hank (standing) and Mark Meijer, seated in their home. Lena was home, expecting their first baby. Having just been told by her doctors that the delivery might have complications, she scheduled and prepared herself for a cesarean section. She was told to show up at the hospital at four o’clock in the afternoon, to prepare for delivery the following day. At that moment, Fred ran into a problem at the office: The employee who had been working on the Grand Opening ads suddenly quit her job, leaving the vital work unfinished. Remembering that Lena had helped with ad layouts for many years, he took the project home around three in the afternoon, thinking they could do it together again, like in the old days.

“This supermarket,” said Hank Meijer, writing about it years later, “was my exact contemporary— opened the week I was born. My mother had been laying out the week’s grocery ad for the Grand Rapids Press at a card table in the living room when she felt the first labor pains. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she put aside her pencil, called to my father and packed for the hospital.”

Two more sons, Doug and Mark, followed soon thereafter, and Lena dedicated herself to family life. With resourcefulness and efficiency, she organized the household so mealtimes were family times. She patched skinned knees and dried teary eyes, all with the calming reassurance that tomorrow would be another day. Then came Little League, band recitals, and numerous school functions characteristic of three growing, energetic boys.

The Meijer home was like a magnet, where all the neighborhood children gravitated and were always welcome. Years later, watching Fred and Lena meeting and greeting guests at Meijer Gardens, season after season, year after year, it was easy to see and feel the same warmth and hospitality of the Meijer home. What was personal became the spirit of what was equally and lovingly public.

Whether it was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, the President of the United States (she met five), European royalty or everyday folks, Lena Meijer treated everyone the same—everyone mattered. Her unpretentious manner and infectious smile made a positive and lasting impression. Like Will Rogers, it seemed, she never met a person she didn’t like.

Lena and Fred traveled to six continents during their 65 years of marriage, while raising a family and overseeing the growth and development of a major Midwestern business. Lena was her husband’s partner in every respect; when the two of them were separated by the vagaries of business or travel, they spoke on the telephone every night and wrote frequent letters as well.

The Meijers enjoyed traveling as much for seeing the sites as for meeting the people. As time went on, they had the opportunity to take in many of the great museums and botanic gardens of the world. If Fred delighted in the wondrous sculpture collections of the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia, Lena thoroughly enjoyed the historic public gardens and the vast array of flowers in bloom. Seeds of what would become Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park were unknowingly planted, years before the institution opened in 1995.

When Fred was initially approached by Betsy Borre of the West Michigan Horticultural Society to help build a botanical garden in Grand Rapids, he was intrigued; it promised to give vision and form to Lena’s love for flowers and gardens. When that society also embraced his passion for sculpture, the cultural organization enjoyed by millions was given life. Together, Fred and Lena delighted in the rapid growth, public embrace, and critical acclaim of what is recognized across the globe as Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

Grand Opening Ribbon Cutting, April 20, 1995. Pictured from left to right: Rev. James Carlson, Grand Rapids Township Supervisor Marsha Bouwkamp, Fred Meijer, Lena Meijer, First Lady Betty Ford, President Gerald R. Ford, Gov. John Engler, and Sen. Carl Levin.

Although Fred has become synonymous with the organization that bears his name, Lena’s interests and the spirit of her character—along with the Meijers’ love for each other—are central to its very being and popular appeal.

The Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory, where lush tropical plants, gorgeous orchids and flirtatious butterflies enchant, was and remains an early icon for the 158-acre main campus. The Lena Meijer Children’s Garden has become a joyous space of exploration and enjoyment for children of all ages, with delightful displays of flowers, plants, tree houses, mazes, and water gardens. Michigan’s Farm Garden continues as an oasis of bygone calm and simple pleasures blooming season after season—including the roses Lena transplanted from the Meijer home she shared for so long with Fred, Hank, Doug and Mark.

Most recently, The Richard & Helen DeVos Japanese Garden stands as a tribute to Lena’s spirit and influence. Although there had been long-standing interest in such an attraction for the Meijer Gardens campus, it was Lena’s love of flowers and having tea with her friends that inspired Fred to suggest such a garden would be created.

When Lena heard that Rich and Helen DeVos were joining them as the naming benefactors for this journey, she said, “That is so wonderful. I love Rich and Helen!” It’s no surprise to note the two-acre lake in the center of the Japanese Garden—shaped in the form of the Japanese kanji character for “heart”—is dedicated to Lena Meijer.

Lena and Fred were married 65 years at the time of Fred’s death. Despite the sadness and loneliness that followed this loss, Lena maintained her involvement at Meijer Gardens and visited often with family and friends. And grandchildren. And great-grandchildren! Lena could often be seen having lunch in the James & Shirley Balk Café with her friends and family. Appropriately, they would sit under Dale Chihuly’s glass masterpiece, Lena’s Garden, hanging from the ceiling. She continued to find many sources of joy from those closest and dearest to her.

It could be said that if Fred Meijer’s passion for sculpture gave Meijer Gardens its soul, Lena Meijer’s love of flowers, plants and gardens gave the institution its heart. In form and spirit, the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park mission visualizes the partnership and love of two remarkable individuals. Lena and Fred. Heart and soul.

We are saddened by Lena’s departure from us, yet eternally grateful for her long and wonderful life. Lena’s presence will be missed. Her warm smile, soft voice and magnanimous spirit will remain with us—year after year, season after season.