GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - He still stops to shake hands and chat with the help, welcomes customers with a smile and gives children cards good for a free ice cream cone at any of his stores. But at age 82, Fred Meijer has decided to greet more visitors at the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park and fewer shoppers at the supercenters that bear his family's name.

        “I've pulled back a lot,” Mr. Meijer said. “I don't feel my first obligation's to the store anymore.”

        That is a big change for a man who until early this year would take a car or the company plane and visit three or four of the 153 Meijer supercenters each week (now it's just one or two) — and who was working the day his father, Dutch immigrant Hendrik Meijer, opened the family's first grocery store in Greenville, about 25 miles northeast of Grand Rapids. (Meijer operates eight stores in Greater Cincinnati, with another being built in Green Township.)

        Fred Meijer, then 14, was a bag boy that first day, June 30, 1934. And he continued to work about 40 hours a week throughout his years at Greenville High School.

        “I never went to a basketball game, a football game, a tennis match, a golf match,” Mr. Meijer recalled. “I didn't even feel deprived.”

Did it with dad

        He and his father developed their small, local group of grocery stores into what is now a chain of stores employing 80,000 people and selling groceries and general merchandise in five states: Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and Michigan. Mr. Meijer worked with his father until Hendrik's death in 1964 at age 80.

        Meijer Inc., based in the Grand Rapids suburb of Walker, is one of the nation's largest family owned retailers. Forbes magazine, which each year publishes a list of the nation's 500 largest private companies, ranked Meijer Inc. No. 11 in 2001. It estimated the company's revenues for the year at $10 billion.

        Fred's son Hank, 50, co-chairman and chief executive officer of Meijer Inc., recalls that his father worked hard — and worried about the business.

        “My father, on a couple of occasions when we were kids, reminded us he had signed his name 99 times on loan agreements and that if he stumbled, he might lose everything,” Hank Meijer said. “So maybe there was a cautionary tale there for us about how we should behave or be thrifty.”

World-class collection

        Not until earlier this year would Fred Meijer start to devote less time to the family business and more time to his new, 30-acre sculpture park near his Grand Rapids home. Since February, his official title at Meijer Inc. has been chairman emeritus.

        “You can say I'm retired. You can say I'm very active. ... At 82 years old, I better not be too active,” he said with a chuckle.

        Organizers say the sculpture area at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park just east of Grand Rapids will be a world-class collection featuring two dozen works by important modern sculptors including Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore and Magdalena Abakanowicz.

        Mr. Meijer has collected other sculpture for years, filling a garage with statues of animals and people, before he found a home for many of them in his 125-acre botanical garden, next to the new sculpture park.

        His interest in the arts began in his youth, when, in even in the hardest of times, Mr. Meijer's parents made sure their children learned about culture.

        “I had piano lessons, clarinet lessons and violin lessons,” he said. “My sister had piano, violin and viola. I was encouraged to sing in choirs. ...

        “The point is, no matter how hard up we were in the Depression, certain things like that — music lessons — came as a part of life, rather than saying we couldn't afford it.”

        The family values and work ethic that Hendrik and Gezina Meijer handed down to their children would, in turn, be taught by Fred and his wife, Lena, to their three sons, who besides Hank include Doug, the co-chairman of the family business, and Mark.

        “We grew up with not only a lot of business philosophies but philosophies on how to treat people,” said Mark Meijer, 44, who owns and runs Life EMS Ambulance in Grand Rapids and sits on the Meijer Inc. board of directors.

Generous man

        Peter Secchia, chairman of Universal Forest Products Inc., a wood products company with headquarters in Grand Rapids, said Fred Meijer is an unassuming, generous man of principle.

        “He drives the same old car he's always had. He lives in the same old house he's always had. He is a character with character. He is a unique individual with principles that never waver,” Mr. Secchia said.

        Hank Meijer said of his father, “He never thought he knew more than anybody else about how to do something. That made him predisposed to trust other people to do their jobs and to enlist the help and listen to the advice of other people.”

        Tom Brown, a Louisville-based author about leadership, said Mr. Meijer's gifts as an employer seem to include an ability to convey his enthusiasm to his workers and build their confidence.

        “What Meijer seems to have done the most is create a feeling in others that they could run a good store, that it wasn't just himself that could set up and run a good store,” Mr. Brown said.

        Mr. Meijer and his wife, married for 56 years, are philanthropists who have given millions of dollars to causes in the Grand Rapids area.

        The sculpture park has required a substantial investment, said Henry Matthews, who until recently spent six years as a board member of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. During that time, he served as co-chairman of the park's sculpture committee.

        “I just can't imagine the community without them,” Mr. Matthews said of the couple. “This garden is their greatest legacy.”

        Fred Meijer said the arts are a vital factor in the quality-of-life equation.

        “Beyond raising a family and working and surviving, that's where the arts come in, and that's the sugar and spice.”

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