every community has certain people founders as we refer to them whose lives have made such a difference in their community but they have permanently impacted the lives of future generations we only hear the names of these people we see them on plaques in statues as names on the side of buildings and company during the next hour you will have the rare opportunity to witness the story of an incredible person a person who has made west michigan what it is today welcome to west michigan biography today we will become more familiar with a gentleman known to many as a true visionary and leader of the hauen community his association with harlem began over forty years ago when he and his wife moved to the area to open a tire supply company his motivation and commitment to the community later led to more than thirty years of civic and community development as well as serving over eleven years on the house and city council with three terms of highland leaving public office in one nine hundred seventy nine to pursue his interests and economic development he then took on the role of president of head corps along with a twenty year position leading the highland area chamber of congress whether volunteering for the tool time festival or meeting with city officials to discuss new ways to improve the quality of services to the hound community lou hell is he has always been a man with a focus consistency that we have all benefited from we hope that you will learn from and be inspired by this founder of west michigan mr louis halsey the second  terrific i think things were tough in those days but as a kid you don't see that i had four sisters and three two brothers and the girls were all over and so i was the youngest my sisters always one he came over here and ended up in cleveland how he met my mother my mother was one of four girls that lived in columbus ohio my dad got in the women's ready to wear business and i think that's what moved him around in those days and then they moved from several different cities from different stores and finally ended up in grand rapids my dad spent twenty seven years working for worst burghs in grand rapids my m and milk man and the horse stopping automatically and without a way to stop him and delivering the milk and the guy would come along during the summer with the ice truck and put kids like to do there was an old swimming pool that was built i think in the early or late twenty's early thirty's that was deserted but i ended that they had a shed and during the winter they had a potbelly stove in  there and we'd go over an ice skate and we always had a rule you know we could play all day have a better be home for dinner and that was that was the rule and then the evening if we were good i guess we'd go out and ice skate during the winter we tried don't know that i ever excelled in any single sport i had a great time doing it as a kid of bumming around willcox park and playing we used to we're right next door to the lowest state and that was in those days this not a problem and one day we got caught there and the dogs pushed us up in the tree a couple of dogs as i remember you know the older it gets the story gets bigger but with the caretaker came down and got us down took us up to the main house and in the by the fireplace in the main room there and we thought we were early in for it and comes a still many is this coffee and cookies and tell us now look at fellows we don't care if you come in and share the fruit or whatever but we don't want to climb over the fence you're going to get hurt and he said so in the future when the gates opened and when the gates closed we prefer you didn't commit and  so that was a great experience as a kid and then of course today i ended up serving as a trustee at aquinas and had many meetings since the same building and so all comes back or all but those are great times we were about two and a half three blocks from st thomas school catholic school that i had tended to the first through the eighth grade when i graduated from the eighth grade to go downtown to catholic centro and grand rapids there were nine girls  where we were take the bus didn't have cars to the war was just beginning to end at that point cars were still relatively scarce but my memories of catholic were catholic central were very good in my senior year  i decided to run for class president and it was a alexion process that was pretty big at least we thought it was big stuff and i made that and graduating class was four hundred plus so again a lot of people that i know we had in grand rapids and my high school days were great went on to growing up as junior college for a year and a half my dad in there that i probably wasn't world's best student but as you'll hear later it was a very strong thing in my married life and our children that we raised so you hear more about that but a year and a half and i got drafted to  go in the korean war i went out to annapolis maryland to aberdeen proving grounds and when you know you look back at your aptitude in later years you say you know i had an aptitude because my aptitude put me in the ordinates automotive ordinance division and small arms division and as we get into this further i ended up in the automobile business the tire business and say look back said no aptitude must've been pretty accurate but from there i got shipped over to germany and one of the young fellows that lived about a block and a half or myself we knew each other all our lives turn around his name was kelly and helicity and he was three people behind me going over and three people behind me coming back but i never saw him the whole time we were over there went to germany put in a ordnance depo just outside of frankfurt in the town a small towns spend a little over a year there before i came back  great experience had an opportunity to travel in several different countries very proud of the fact that we were in italy and went to the vatican happened to be on ascension thursday and stood probably twenty feet from pope pius the twelfth you know totally unexpected and then i had the opportunity to travel down to southern italy and those were good memories of the time we had over there the only thing we probably didn't like is we had to live out in the field at least thirty days every sixty ninety days so we were in the field a lot we lived out of work out a trailer semi trailers but mandatory and we slept in tents that was never my forte we didn't really care for them anyway came back to grand rapids and i didn't know whether i wanted to go back on the school got a job selling life for a mutual life in new york as i moved through that for a few months friend of mine called one night and said and aquinas is having a mixer i don't want you to now with me at the love at first sight and her name was madeline fed and from then on it's just a matter of history we made arrangements to go out on a movie or something on a sunday afternoon and it just so happened that sunday morning i had to take my dad to the train with my mother to on a buying trip to new york so i brought my mother back home we both fell asleep forgot to call her but she took my call later in the day and we were married  married and first visit to petoskey was the furthest north i had been other than big rapids in my life then all the way around different parts of the world and never made it to northern michigan where dad was  the goodyear tire distributor in a mobile dealer for northern michigan in pitofsky and they said there was a tire store available for sale and in holland and  you know i didn't know black tire from a white tire and they wanted to help us get started in a business and also had a recapping plant which was good in those days and people were buying holland we were expecting our first child we were able to lease apartments in the temple building on tenth street and our first exposure to holland was waking up   we lived there for about a year and then bought a home on thirty fifth street and had a second son there and then a few years later we had a daughter we have four boys and two girls and  y we had a chance to buy a house down closer to school and church on fifteenth street so we bought that house and so i got to work for a barber in sixty seven and we had an opportunity to trade our house for a house in holland heights and which was closer for me to work but a little further because in those days they didn't have a school bus so my wife had to truck to kids back and forth and it ate on the highway it was just a little flash of light and so that was always a little bit tedious but it worked well i tell you you know four of our children are married and we have twelve grandchildren and i always tell people if they know and they ever so much fun we had them first  we just recently had the opportunity of having all of our family together all twenty four of us the first time in seventeen years we celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary in pitofsky as i mentioned and it was just great to see those grandchildren and all grown the oldest one is twenty seven and the youngest this three years so we've got a great spread there and lots of fun to come yet a lot of people when they move to a community  but my wife's support getting involved in things was just automatic i mean we got active in our church we were in a church study group and we met a lot of people through worked out very well for us as we as we moved along i became president of the holland jaycee's in the early sixty's and that requires more involvement to go do this do that we always did it together and to me that was the important thing and then in sixty three the tire business was going more and more to the major manufacturers outlets themselves  and you could see that the individual recapping business was waning you know i must say that during those years the support i got from people in the community that helped helping us get started in the pattern of family seymour and stuart were really responsible for us getting a lot of tire and service business and that was help when we first came to town john f donnelly in those  sixty four when i went on the board of review hundred sixty three the tire business was changing and we had a lot of competition from the major manufacturers our equipment was aging and i could see the need for major replacement my in laws who are our partners were only a few years away from retirement and of course that would require their financial assistance and expanding our business and we could see that at least my wife and i could see that it was going to be a struggle to move ahead and that type of the field not necessarily selling the tires but the recapping and and how the motor had told us that they were moving their major services for repairs to grand rapids which meant we had to open a store there and so we opted to try and put it up for sale and we were a few anxious moments between your in laws and your wife and yourself but it turned out we found a buyer the barber from ari barber head contacted me and showed an interest in hiring me and i used cars were probably the furthest thing from my mind so i took a job with kelly springfield covering out state michigan for cali and i did that for about ten months and with raising a young family wasn't my idea of being away from home so i decided  that maybe i should be looking for something else well while i was away on a trip bob did call and talk to madeleine and said i like to talk to lou and so we went from there and months or so later i went to work this is leasing manager and worked for him for eighteen years was very much part of the operation from the leasing to the sales over the years you know in that kind of business you fill in wherever you're needed and we took the leasing company and grew it he was a nationwide leasing company and had sold that off and wanted to concentrate more in just west michigan which is what we did looking ahead well and sixty   and then in sixty seven there was an opening in the first ward which we lived and we had just moved into holland heights and put my name in it and that's how i got started in council ari and weld and they were very very helpful and without them my political career would never have started because the time moved on and in sixty eight i had to run for my own seat and the first holland but at the last minute he did it was after i had my name already out there and course bill won and turned out to be a great mary only served one term but really moved started to move the city forward in the sevent s under bill i had the opportunity to serve as mayor pro tem which also gave me exposure to planning commission and in seventy three when bill said he wasn't going to run i did run and got elected and ran for three terms retiring in seventy nine during that time the city went through a major transition a lot of things happened we built a park and cemetery building for those that go back a few years way back when they had their park department stuff stored here and stored there where the college park fire department is today that used to be little sheds where they held their lawn mowers and stuff like that and so we built up a so they  in seventy six we formed the building authority which i like gave us the financing arm to do some of those things the stadium was built when i was mayor and that was build with the help of a group of businessmen together at the holiday inn on a saturday morning for coffee and somewhere in the archives is the place mat where the commitments of several thousands of dollars was made over coffee that morning to support and then hope college course stepped up to the plate and we're we're matching also so there again there was that town gown relationship continues to show up in the stadium story you know we were playing at riverview park which was flat and muddy and we thought we were getting away from that out when it was announced that we're to build a stadium a lady came into my office and in those days right behind where the stadium was built this where the city burned all their stumps and trees and of course you could burn all that stuff in those days and she's a mr mayor it's you can't build there it's full of springs and so those springs move all over my husband worked there for years and  so we gave the engineers that information well we built the stadium and there's an editorial in the file somewhere they call it halsey's fallacy and they're still struggling to a degree with the  springs side but the stadium has served well it's a great asset to the community i think one of the highlights of when i was mayor will a lot of things happened too many to cover but it was the visit of the present a united states that it never happened we've had whistle stops that sort of thing we were entertaining the mayor from mount pleasant for mayor exchange when that call came in and had the opportunity susan ford was already our grand marshal but he was going to be an honorary marshal he was taking the train trip from flint to kalamazoo and then going into grand rapids for a fundraising dinner but they helicoptered him into holland that solution was made at ten o'clock thursday night and by midnight they were moving stuff into the michigan bell building on tenth street and those next two days were kind of a whiz they were gone we watched them seal the manholes met with the the f b i secret service secret service the program was for my wife and myself to greet them at the airport but it was pouring rain that day and so we were put in a hangar and we couldn't even look out and watch the helicopter land and then they went on into holland and did the parade i think it stopped when they went through but  so one of the interesting parts of the when they came back while they were gone we got a good look at marine one with just a helicopter and they took all the tulips that her daughter was going to give them and took each one and checked it checked and knocked the wo shoes together i mean it was the security was good in those days if if you know people think it's tough today but it was a great experience you know my feeling was is that the young people growing up watch that parade and even the adults would always remember that they had the opportunity to see the president the united states come down and i think that's just read just had a recent president come but he was on the north side and he came through holland  like that to a prime parade to me that was great some of the other things that went on in those years as the tax abatement program came into being the d d a was formed for downtown  continued to we built the lamb administration we built the police department in district court and you know you're getting old when they tear buildings down that you helped build as you know we got a new police station today in and well needed but so many good things happened my wife and i were on our way to a meeting to a wedding in new york and i was reading an article on the airplane and said  the tournaments arose that this is going to be a flower parade and a bicentennial year seventy six so i put in my mind we really ought to do that and came back and talk to the city manager and some of the council some of the council people and we raised thirty five thousand dollars the float cost twenty five thousand and there were seven of us that rode in the tournament of pro roses parade and one hundred seventy six and labor not this is the the thirtieth anniversary coming up this year great experience great exposure for for the city of holland we in those days we were rated as one of the top lower festivals in the country and the award we received was a picture of our float that signified we were the award winner cities outside of cal california under one hundred thousand and again no no tax monies in that we did swim meets we had just a great group of volunteers that helped us with that project something again to show off your community when i got elected mayor  you know it's a very part time job and but it becomes very pull time job because no matter where you go where there's a ribbon cutting are groundbreaking or whatever my program was to hold office hours on wednesday afternoon and they had pretty good attendance people would come with questions or whatever but the average day i was busy selling cars you know when you're gone nobody sells the cars for you so that you have to do a balancing act between the two and it worked very well for me one thing that i learned from being mayor was that you have to be very punctual and you have careful what you do we're always reminded of the story when we let the kids up and go to russ for dinner and they go ahead and order because dad was always talking to somebody and you know dad knows everybody you know those are the kind of things that i'm sure the councilman and mayor get yet today but you know i think the unique thing that worked well for me is that i fully understood where the city manager was coming from and again i was so fortunate to have the years i never a real infringement on those on those responsibilities and about their responsibility was to keep me informed so that you don't get caught short handed on what's going on and it worked very well the the the time i spent i just loved it i thought it was great you know to represent a community like holland no matter where you went everybody you know if we were on a trip and i'm sure that other people run into that where do you live i live in ali i was at point west i was here i was there it's just a great great community did and it to be a mayor of a community like that was something that i never dreamed would happen but you know it just happened and you just hope that you do the best job you can for the community as my term began to me up in seventy nine i had made the decision not to run again i had looked at the opportunity to possibly go to lansing but decided with kids going into colleges cetera that wasn't what i i want to be away from home and that maybe i might go back to school and then ari passed away and he and that's when i decided to pass up the schooling to my thoughts were maybe i could teach political science  well i think the the proudest moment that i would have said chamber executive was the growth that we were able to have as he as the chamber what it did it told us we were doing the right thing for our business members you know one of the things that people don't understand or i think maybe better today is that they always figured that the chamber was an arm of the city and they were supported by the city and it's a it's an organization a business and you are a member of the chamber of the city is that a member of the chamber and businesses are and that's how we operate many people think we are affiliated with the michigan chamber or the u s chamber and we're affiliate with them because we play we pay dues to them and i think that's very important that people realize that it's a standalone organization and it's basically out there and its main purpose is to do things said in hants their business members when i came on board in eighty four we were still the unit that took all the stuff for the downtown merchants and in eighty four the city hired greg robinson who became the downtown manager and i think there was some real concern that we were not going to get out of that and we handed it over to him when he look at what we've got today and two thousand and five is wonderful so i think there's many things that  the chamber has done that you don't toot your horn about but you get it done and i think our membership grew only because we offered the programs and did the things that they wanted well in  but they were in a position to name the person president and so my first obligation as i came on board was to begin to run it more like a business although i have to commit the chamber was had a real sound financial structure my predecessor ran a good ship it was time for a change my first objective was to grow the chamber when i came in we had about five hundred members and in cleaning it out and looking at the ones that hadn't paid we went down to three hundred seventy five and in the next twenty years we took it from the three seventy five to six hundred fifty we then became one of the largest chambers in the state of michigan probably in the top ten some of the programs that needed to be attention and we go out to try sell memberships and you know used to be joined the chamber because it was the thing to do that wasn't flying anymore they wanted some structure to it and so we used to hold seminars and we might collect ten dollars from somebody to attend a seminar and gave us enough to buy the coffee and rolls for the for the meeting and as we got into it we wanted to get more qualified speakers able to get a higher fee for that and which made us a little more profit and the theory back twenty years twenty five years ago was budgeting zero and  then take long to realize you can't run a business that way but that was a mentality that was there and so moved us to change that the only way you could change that is that you had to put in new programs that would generate additional interesting part the chamber dues that were building each year were all build in january so when they got to the late fall they were out of money there was no cash flow and that made it very difficult so if you go back and look at the records many of the programs we put in were staggered throughout the year so that we could have a but cash flow as we ran the programs some of the key programs i think that were very helpful was a strong small business program a seminar series that the chamber runs also leadership hall and i think we looked for two years was first class we weren't going to move around in cars we had buses to move them around and work with the different places and that is a thriving program yet today the maximum goal we wanted was thirty i'm not sure we ever hit that but we were very close at twenty seven twenty six year after year and it's in it's we started that in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight and through two thousand and four it's been a very successful program i think those two are probably the key elements we started to holland first the diversity program few years ago and that was for the folks that were working every day couldn't get a day a month off for ten months but could spare a couple hours in the evening and get a mini leadership program and make them knowledgeable what's going on in the community probably the biggest project we had was selling the facility downtown railroad it takes a while we'd also talk to cunningham domon about the building that the chambers in currently and seeing if that was possible when the reason for that is that we were in a very small section of the warm front hotel we had absolutely no parking and i don't know how many times people would come in very irate after they had been in to buy a map for a dollar and then come out with a ticket and it seemed like there was just absolutely no room at all that was contrary to what the thinking was but we needed to get out where we had more space available so we bought the property  sun to seventy two we states renovated internally and some externally we developed a parking lot in the back that wasn't there before and it served the chamber well when i retired the building was paid for and i felt that was a major accomplishment for a person the chamber you try and do things that help the chamber and the organisation  i had a new chief or a new chairman of the board every twenty years once every year for twenty years and during that time i my recollection is i never had one that i ever had a confrontation with it is just a great partnership and i think that's something on both sides you know the thing that really is outstanding in my mind i had the opportunity to serve on the american chamber of commerce executive board of directors i became a certified chamber executive there was a matter in eighty three of my kind of going back to school that i hadn't been for a while and the requirements of that time were  were a little different than they are today i almost had to put a scrapbook together of your activities and then you went for the essay writing process in washington for a whole day they gave you twelve questions you had answer ten and then they took those ten and passed them out to ten chamber exacts throughout the country and that's how you were graded and i felt that was a great accomplishment for me and then i had to go before a board of the kind of bo of examiners that take a look at you and you know i was not of the chamber circuit in those days the chamber exec came in for a few years moved on moved from one city cut to a bigger city and kept moving up the ladder and i was kind of the beginning of the cut where chamber executives came on board and stayed because it was better for the community but the mentality throughout even volunteers was well i was going to be here for five years  get to know the bankers and the businessman and he's gone we start over again but i felt that was really i had the opportunity to serve on the michigan travel travel commission those were all things that were related to our tourism part of our business which is big we had if i had kept track of all the inquiries and the questions we had from people local a should have kept an open book and i would be able to write a bestseller and holland jaycee's that time it was going to be a stock company without a dividend payout and no guarantee that you would ever get your stock money back but it worked out very well they  raised enough money to buy the first hundred acres in the south side industrial park in the that's where some of the plants are today seven up and several of those plants were in that first park as it moved on the time i came on board we were running out of land and we had purchased the option some land on thirty second street across from the princeton so that he and had options on that to buy it but couldn't work out an arrangement with fillmore township through a boundary commission agreement later on we eventually got the property back but we moved ahead to move the holland township prior to that time headquartered never operated outside the city of holland and it was a major venture it was a tough go out there but as you can see throughout the years i think there's  thirty forty industries out there now employing several thousand people and what we did in that operation is we decided to make it a park for the twenty first century type with all the  drainage everything underground so you don't have all these and we had some real interesting experiences we ran a what you call a follow with the d n r at one time cost us a quarter of a million dollars and twenty eight months to get settled with as we got it settled we settled for four acres of wetlands and moved ahead with the project and then in one thousand nine hundred ninety four we purchased three hundred additional acres which used to totally just it's an honor that still blows me away but headquarters done well for the community it's created a lot of jobs they're entering into a total different area with a change of  local ownership and they are certainly having you know positions to make sure that that is being handled properly and so the community will move ahead in that area one of the things that it has done continually is made sure that we have land ready when the industry needed it and that was one of the things that most industrial parks they had it's own for industrial but the utilities etc were at their head core  something's going to happen to our downtown we need to address that and so we entered into an agreement with the city that and with a company called sue kelly hunter to annapolis maryland to do a study pre study as to what the downtown needed new you have to remember back in one revenue sharing came in in the late mid seventy's we did a landscaping many of the trees you see on a street today were put in that project so the study came through and said we needed to study you know that was a surprise to anybody but we did a full fledged study and it showed that we'd need several thousand square feet a new retail by the mid eighty's and by the mid eighty's that was already there was before the mall and the downtown renovation had core continued i bought the properties for had gore between six and seven st between college and central and all those houses and we were committed to being not to be a slum landlord we bought the houses and tore them down or moved them we also bought property we're free to believe just today so that something were to be developed there today we would have hold on the property somebody couldn't take it away from us and the last property we were able to buy down there was the ideal laundry cleaners and that's where the park is today well when i retired  i did basically the same thing it was when i got out of the city hall you know you can either continue to live your job or you turn it over to someone else and i've always felt very blessed th i've been able to turn and walk away and give it to the next person and try to and i think i've done that with the chamber and had gore and i've also done it when i left city hall it's somebody else turn when i six months before i retired i wondered what i was going to do when you're so active i worked five years longer than i really had intended primary to work a chamber so i formed a little consulting company and was doing a little work with that trying to still work on my golf game and perfect up but that's not going as well as i expected some days it's  right there some days it isn't we've been good fortunate enough to leave and early part of the year and spend a few months in florida and visit our kids in georgia on the way and have some of the kids down to see this and so basically i'm living the life of a retiree and i'm loving every minute of it and when you look back to your involvement in the community he wondered how different things happened when we moved to holland my father and mother in law were firm believers in the chamber of commerce and one of the first things i had to do when we set up shop and took ownership was to walk over and sign up as a chamber member and met the chamber exact bill van of water and a few weeks later bill comes across the street and said to you know i need somebody to drive the chamber float and wondered if you'd like to do that and that was one thousand nine hundred fifty six the year we moved here and for several years i drove the chamber afloat  and in sixty three i was asked to help with said wednesday parade and got together with henry vandal and he for this for this sixty four year  and some of the records of the previous year were not around and so henry and i reconstructed that prayed a benz for sixty four and it was a real experience  and that it was my involvement in getting on the board and in sixty seven mayor bosman was working at his cottage and inhaled poison ivy few and was really ill for quite a and so i had a hiatus for that six years and then when i came on the chamber board i got back into the festival the festival for many many years  operated with a shop that opened in the fall and ran until the end of june and then shot down with a part time director i know that i can remember bill workers and  butler telling me that they'd go up the street up and down the business district and try and raise money to start the festival up each year you know we wouldn't even think of that today we could always see out there somewhere that maybe someday we could have a full time director of the festival and operate it to stay competitive and for for many many years we had no other competition in the spring there were no other spring festivals today that's not true and so you have to and we have bus tours that would come out of the east and the west and we'd have them from all over and today a bus tours aren't strong as they used to be i've seen a lot of changes in the festival we've had  years was the place in the community for tourism information i mean we'd be flooded with phone calls and people but you know in the state of michigan formed public act fifty five in the late eighty's which allowed for a two percent assessment room usage as not a room tax as an assessment so if somebody of a hotel didn't pay it you had to sue him you couldn't go after him for not paying their taxes so we had the vision of hiring a director and forming a convention visitors bureau my vision was we should take saugatuck hall and put it together and you know what you had to do for every governing body every township and governing body that you put into the so c asian you had to have a positive vote so we worked with sauga and half with the two a festival that split off a few years ago and running on its own today but the chamber we played a major role in pulling that together the first director we had we hired out of california unfortunately her resume didn't match with her experience so we soon parted company but we've had local people running it ever since it community is only good programs in the people that has people things but it's really the community they do things to support the community the festival is to me something that unites the community together i mean for many years i've heard people say i go up north during the festival and that may be and that's their right but overall the school kids they get it for from the time they're small the school is in the program and it becomes part of their life and one thing i've learned over the years that  makes a key component of the community is the cultural aspects of the community and if that's void in a community you've got real problems and that's why it's been so good to see the holland museum and the festival the arts council things like that continue to grow because that is such a key important thing it's it has such an effect i mean if you look at just the tulip time festival the housing bureau was still relatively strong  can grounds people come and stay at the campgrounds the churches have dinners and you've got what seven or eight thousand volunteers doing something during that festival and and the support we're getting from local companies in sponsorships today not only helps the company but it supports the festival you know for years i was on the museum board when it operated under the single light up in city hall on the third floor until it went myself ever thought it would get that far but you have to have that component communities are made up of about five components and one is the people second is the churches the education  recreation and culture and you need all those components to make it fly and how it's got it all you know over the years as i mentioned earlier the town gown relationship holland and i had to look at holland and hope college and say you know wow they should just take the model that's created here and that that was long before i became involved it's just ongoing you know the college is been very cooperative with the city the city likewise ox roast was started with mayor bosman and that was in conjunction with the students in the in the college and i you know one of the key things that maybe i should have mentioned when i was on council a subject of closing twelve street came up and for those of those that are new to the community don't miss that but twelve straight went right through the college and he came a very very hot issue for us we voted to close it and as i look back today it was definitely the right thing to do but again those kind of efforts cement the town going relationship and then you know the city is involved very much in different programs at the college and again the college has done an enormous amount of good in the core city and the new buildings they're putting up and have put up the student body the expansion of the downtown and the many restaurants and shopping area the central shopping district we have is open to the students and so i think the future of working together with the college and the city is going to continue and it's just great when you've been involved in as many projects that i have over the years some come the mind is to have a long lasting effects on the community i think window on the waterfront is probably a very close to the top of the chamber doesn't get much recognition and it doesn't have to for that project but that's where it started when we were still down on a street in the warm front hotel that's when that idea we could look out from the hotel and go down to windmill island and that is just great that that's coming around my hat's off to my good friend jerry redeker he went out and raised the majority of money for that if i had any regret i work for ten years developing a new area center for the community we knew it was a difficult task and trying to pull to government three governmental agencies together to form a long term bonding process and taxing process i think we made great strides but you know i look back and i say that might be my number one regret that we didn't get that but when i look at what's happening with the divorce fieldhouse today i have no regrets because first of all that's right back on the first site that we picked and we bounced from there to former g e site which is now being torn down  and the river or the one on the riverside where the former dump site used to be condominiums so you know when you look back and that ten year vision which is now fifteen years old and you say was it the right thing to  do i think it was i think that would have been great for the community but that's the nice thing about holland is it's steps up when something doesn't go something else comes along takes its place and i think that it was field house is going to serve the community well i'm convinced that in future years there will be a fine arts center here fine arts centers or major chore there or a bill looser financially but again we come back to that cultural aspect of the community it's something that a community needs concern i had before the divorce fieldhouse came about was that those economic development dollars were eroding to other cities kalamazoo grand rapids m who had arenas and in order to keep that money here and to keep your and to service your people we needed the facility and i think for the time being the device field house was service so you may have some gains and losses but overall again it comes right back this is a great place and is serving a well and as a community has been diversified the different cultures and a lot of that has been brought about by the expansion of our manufacturing and the opportunities we have for education we have for colleges in our area now who would have ever thought that because it is a response to the needs of all those people many of the of the organizations that have sprung up are organizations that support the diversity and that's something that we have to live with and every every community has grown the one thing that we've done is that i think we're growing together and that's extremely important well when i look at the future of holland i look at it in a very excited manner holland has a lot going for us when you look at the opportunities that are coming here in the sense of having expanded educational opportunities you have a great base in the religious community  a great choice of churches a great choices of schools that excel in education and you have an opportunity and recreation that is not open to every community we've got a big pond out there that is open to us year round the other thing that is very promising in the future is that the infrastructure of the community has continued to expand and grow with the times again i come back to the volunteer base i encourage these folks to get involved in their church groups weatherby study groups or leadership or finance committees deacons whatever  get involved in the festival whether it's just a part of a parade maher show or a board member of the arts council the i mean i can go on and on is that there are so many opportunities for young people today in holland and i in many communities the volunteer program is eroding it's not happening that way here in the future i don't see that a roading in my advice to young people is to step up and take mom and dad's place and create a great place for your kids to live