Frederik Meijer began working in his father’s small Greenville, Michigan grocery store when he was 14, and he has been a major force behind the expansion of that humble enterprise into Meijer, Inc., whose 176 stores are now based in five states. Fred and his wife Lena, who once worked as a cashier in the original Greenville store, have been generous benefactors to the community of Grand Rapids, founding both the Fred and Lena Meijer Heart Center and the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. An avid student of Dutch History, and a regular visitor to the Netherlands—his father’s birthplace—Fred hopes that the Frederik Meijer Chair in Dutch Language and Culture will provide a thorough and fair-minded exploration of the country he loves: “The Netherlands people are a mixture of many things,” he said. “I would hope this chair brings a pure history of the Netherlands and its people with all the warts and all the variations.