Ed Prince: Giant

Ed Prince was a giant. His impact was so large we can still see his footprints in Holland.

Yet his beginnings were humble.

He was born in 1931 to Peter and Edith DeWeert Prince, who lived at 75 West 17th Street. In 1943 Peter, a wholesale produce dealer, died of a heart attack while driving his truck to Grand Rapids. As a result, Edith sewed draperies and Ed found work at Vandenberg, an auto dealership located a block-and-a-half away at 16th Street and River Avenue (present-day home to Family Dollar).?

Despite his family’s hardships, Ed attended Michigan Tech and then the University of Michigan (UM), where he studied engineering and participated in the Air Force ROTC. While at UM, Ed hitchhiked back to Holland to sell cars at Vandenberg. He graduated from UM in 1953.?

In March 1954 he married Elsa Zwiep, a sociology major at Calvin College who worked as a teacher at Longfellow School. Her father, Dick Zwiep, had founded Zwiep’s Seed Store at 9 West 16th Street before expanding into the nursery and greenhouse business at Van Raalte Avenue and 25th Street (present-day home to Holland High School’s soccer field and tennis courts). For the next two years, while Ed served in the Air Force, Ed and Elsa lived in Colorado and South Carolina. In 1956, Ed took an engineering job with Buss Machine Works.?

Buss Machine Works had a long history in Holland. Charles P. Buss had started the company in New Hampshire in 1862; his son Wendell Buss had then moved the company to Holland in 1895, encouraged by George Hummer, who was a principal investor. Buss and Hummer located the Buss Machine plant on the north side of 8th Street at Maple Avenue.? In 1934 Jay Petter purchased the company, then a maker of wood planers and wood components for automobiles. Jay Petter’s son Jay encouraged Prince to join the company. Then, in 1959, the Petter family sold the business to a unionized company from Illinois, which over time increased Ed Prince’s itch to start his own company.

Entrepreneur

In 1965 Prince left Buss, borrowed all the money he could, and started a small die cast machine company in a metal building on a dirt road northeast of the US-31 near 32nd Street. Joining Prince were William “Bill” Van Appledoorn, an electrical engineer, Wayne Alofs, who became his plant manager, and Henry VanderKolk, who organized production work. They bought their first two pieces of equipment, a used lathe and drill press, from a salesman at Wing and Jabaay Machine Tool Sales in Grand Rapids by the name of John Spoelhof.

Ed, Bill, Wayne, and Henry worked day and night, and then some. (Sometimes Ed would return in the middle of the night in his pajamas to tinker on the machines.) At first, they rebuilt die cast machines; then built new ones.?

In 1966 Prince Corporation shipped its first two new die casting machines, then sold several dozen to Honeywell and General Motors. By 1969 Prince was already employing 80 people, including John Spoelhof and Kon Marcus, who had previously worked at Donnelly Corp as an engineer designing lighting for cockpits. One of their machines, sold to Chrysler, could produce aluminum transmission cases at a rate of one every two minutes.?

When the automotive business went into a slump in the early 1970s, Ed and his team attempted to diversify by building ham-deboning machines. Although they sold some to Hormel in Iowa and European and Russian meat processors, Prince eventually sold the line to a Dutch company and invested in automotive visor production.

The genesis of the visor business was Ed watching Elsa attempt to apply lipstick at night in the dark of their car. With Ed’s encouragement, Kon Marcus, having seen his wife struggle as well, took on the illuminated vanity visor project. In 1971 he crafted a crude prototype out of a filed down Tupperware dish and a mirror. Then Ed, John, and Kon presented a refined version to the Cadillac Division of GM and received an order for 500 visors. Unfortunately, the trio didn’t yet know how they would build the product. But Ed’s “can do” attitude prevailed. First, they purchased commercial sewing machines, but the machines weren't strong enough. Then, with the help of engineer Carl Flowerday, they designed and built their own visor-making machines. By 1973 Prince Corporation was producing thousands of illuminated vanity visors per day.?

But in that same year Ed Prince suffered a heart attack.

At the time, he was an entrepreneurial force -- he built a company which became a leading automotive supplier. There were several reasons for his business success: Ed was a tinkerer and always looking for a better way to do things. He also had a “can-do” attitude. Both his ability and attitude attracted talented people who remained loyal because of Ed’s confidence in them, openness to their ideas, desire to share with them the rewards, and short memory of failures. And there were failures: an airplane propeller-driven snowmobile, a light for sock drawers, and an onboard computer to track gas mileage.?

The propeller-driven snowmobile is especially memorable. Suffice it to say that neighbors may still remember the ear-piercing noise of Kon’s prototype test run on the ice in Lake Macatawa's narrows.

Industrialist

In contrast, among Prince Corporation’s greatest successes was the lighted visor. So confident was Ed in his team with their idea that he, John Spoelhof, and Kon Marcus solicited an order from Cadillac before developing a production process. With little time to spare, they completed the order, even though it meant making their own machines after the machines they planned on using failed.?

Yet manufacture visors they did. By 1973 they were producing thousands of visors per day and supplying assembly plants around the world.?

But Ed's heart attack caused him to reflect on his life. In response, he decided to devote more time to his family, support the causes and people he believed in, and hand over the day-to-day responsibilities of his company, which continued to grow at an exponential rate, to John Spoelhof.?

In 1977 Prince Corporation made map lights for the 1978 Mustang; in 1979 it made floor consoles for the 1979 Cadillac Seville. Later it made overhead consoles for Chrysler New Yorker sedans and Dodge and Plymouth minivans.?

To increase capacity, Prince Corporation purchased the former Roamer Boat Plant on Lakewood Boulevard. In 1983, as total employment reached 1,000, Prince Corporation opened a new Corporate Center on South Waverly Avenue. In 1985, Prince supplied the Chrysler New Yorker with an overhead console and the 1986 Dodge and Plymouth minivans. Prince Corporation also opened a new Technology Center. By the end of the 1980s, Prince employed 2,000 people.

In 1992 Prince Corporation opened a $2 million medical facility on its campus, staffed by physicians, nurses, lab technicians, and a pharmacist, and equipped with an x-ray machine.

In the 1990s Prince Corporation began manufacturing door panels. At its peak, it employed 4,500 people.?

Philanthropist

In addition to practicing his faith in business, Ed practiced his faith through philanthropy. From the time he launched Prince Corporation, he donated 5% of his company's pre-tax profits to various organizations. He also practiced tithing with his personal income. We can still see the impact of his generosity today:

• In 1983 the Prince family created Evergreen Commons with a pledge of $1 million. Half of the funds were designated to purchase and remodel the old Holland Christian School site at the Michigan, State, and River Avenue "Y."
• In 1986 Ed and Elsa formed Lumir Corporation to transform buildings in downtown Holland. One of their first projects was the well-known Tower Clock building. Ed Prince was also a principal contributor to the Riverview Group, a Holland-area private development and planning council.
• In 1987, Ed partnered with William VanderBilt, John Tysse, Ron Boeve, Gordon Van Wylen, and Robert Roskamp to build Freedom Village, an upscale retirement complex offering health care and other amenities for up to 500 residents.
• In 1988 Ed initiated and contributed $250,000 toward the $1.1 million cost of the proposed Holland downtown snowmelt system and agreed to pay 25% of its operating costs.
• In 1992 Ed donated a 10-acre plot of land to Davenport University for a Holland campus.
• In 1993 the Princes agreed to underwrite Ray VanderLaan's "That the World May Know" video series on Jesus' life in Israel, a $2 million project.
• The Prince family significantly supported Calvin College, Hope College, Holland Christian Schools, Ridge Point Church, and Hospice, not to mention individuals and national and international organizations, such as Focus on the Family and Family Research Council.

But then, in 1995, at age 63, Ed Prince suffered his second heart attack. This one was fatal.

In 1998 Johnson Controls purchased the Prince Corporation.

Information for this story comes from Bob Swierenga’s Holland Michigan, Holland Sentinel articles, and conversations with former employees and current family members.

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