Erik’s sister Betsy DeVos would go on to chair Michigan’s Republican Party from 1996 to 2000 and from 2003 to 2005; at times she flirted with running for the U.S. Senate.39 She was also a George W. Bush “Pioneer” fundraiser, bringing in more than $100,000 for his campaign.40 Her husband, Dick, was the GOP candidate for governor in 2006, a race that he ultimately lost.41 Seasoned observers of Michigan politics say it would be hard to overestimate the influence the DeVos family has on politics in the state. “Anyone who runs for a significant Republican office in Michigan has to check with the DeVos family,” said Calvin College political science professor Doug Koopman. “They are perceived within that community as being not only a source of funds but a judge of [a candidate’s] fitness.”42
The Prince and DeVos clans were also a major driving force behind the Michigan Family Forum (MFF), the state’s chapter of Jim Dobson’s Focus on the Family.43 Besides the tens of thousands of dollars that the Prince family poured into the MFF, another of Erik Prince’s sisters, Emilie Wierda, has served as its treasurer.44 The MFF has mobilized voters in conservative churches to support legislators who have backed the Christian right’s agenda. Beginning in 1990, the MFF ran what was essentially a backdoor lobbying system, through the establishment of more than one thousand church-based Community Impact Committees (CICs), which operated under the radar, away from public scrutiny.45 “The CICs offer advantages to political organizing that other Christian Right organizing doesn’t have,” Russ Bellant wrote in his 1996 book The Religious Right in Michigan Politics. “Because they are based in churches, their meetings are not visible in the world of politics. Since laypersons rather than pastors may run these groups, they may not have a high profile even in the church community outside the Family Forum network.”46 The MFF also established the Michigan Prayer Network, which consisted of “prayer warriors” assigned to nearly every legislator in the state.47 While the groups were prohibited from expressly lobbying, the effect of asking legislators to “pray” for issues like school choice and against gay rights made it, as one Michigan legislator put it, “just another lobbying gimmick.”48
While opening his wallet to the Christian right, Edgar Prince also became a patron to the entire community of Holland, investing millions of dollars into Hope College, founded by Albert Van Raalte, and its equally devout rival Calvin College, Edgar’s wife’s alma mater.49 He and Elsa almost single-handedly reengineered and brought a boom to Holland’s downtown, saving it from the fate hundreds of other small towns had suffered throughout the Midwest as they gradually slipped into economic oblivion due to poor urban planning coupled with outsourcing, downsizing, layoffs, and the overall decline of U.S. manufacturing. The Princes helped establish the Evergreen Commons, a popular senior center downtown, and lobbied hard for the preservation and restoration of historic landmarks in town.50 They fought for a well-planned city that would exist and thrive for generations while maintaining what they saw as a necessary connection to its Dutch roots. They personally took on causes like saving an 1892 stone clock tower that had once been a cornerstone of downtown before falling into disrepair.51 Some of Edgar Prince’s ideas for maintaining a vibrant downtown seemed utterly insane. He envisioned and campaigned hard in the late 1980s for an underground system of heated pipes that would melt snow and ice throughout the downtown business district, ensuring that strollers could be pushed along the sidewalks even during western Michigan’s harsh winters.52 When the city balked at the $1.1 million plan, Prince ponied up a quarter of the funding himself.53
All the while, Edgar Prince continued to balance his business and religious obligations, both to his local Dutch Reform Church and the Prince Corporation. “Ed was at his best and was most valuable to [the Family Research Council] during the dark and difficult times—during the confirmation battle over Clarence Thomas, following the bitter disappointment of the Supreme Court’s unexpected pro-abortion ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, through the anti-family shift in the Congress in 1992, and in recent months with the wave of efforts by some to redefine the traditional family and undermine marriage,” Gary Bauer wrote of Prince in 1995.54 Prince Corporation continued to flourish, a “boom built on Biblical principles,” Bauer wrote.55 In 1992, the company roster had grown to 2,250 employees.56 By early 1995, it had ballooned to more than 4,000 employees and $400 million in annual sales.57 Prince had also married his business acumen with his desire to see Holland thrive and had founded Lumir Corporation, which became Holland’s foremost downtown developer, responsible for projects like the $2.5 million Evergreen Commons Senior Center.58 But tragedy would soon strike the Prince empire.
At about 1:00 p.m. on March 2, 1995, Edgar Prince had one of his usual chats with Prince Corporation president John Spoelhof,59 a longtime friend with whom he had just gone skiing in Colorado a week earlier.60 They said good-bye, and the sixty-three-year-old Prince stepped into the elevator at his company’s headquarters. Inside, he suffered a massive heart attack and was found on the floor fifteen minutes later.61 Despite CPR attempts by two Prince employees, Edgar was pronounced dead within the hour.62 “I saw him probably two minutes before he passed away,” Spoelhof said. “I looked at the expression of his face and the color of his face and Ed was Ed. I knew him so well all these years; if he would have been a little ashen, I would have noticed.”63
As happens with the deaths of kings, patriarchs, and heads of state, the town of Holland entered a period of intense mourning. The flag flew at half-staff.64 Every newspaper in the region ran front-page stories eulogizing Prince, accompanied with sidebars and pictures and timelines. More than one thousand people gathered at the Christ Memorial Reformed Church to hear evangelical leaders James Dobson and Gary Bauer, who referred to Edgar as his “mentor,” eulogize Prince.65 Bauer remembered how Prince was adamant that the Family Research Council’s new headquarters in Washington, D.C., should have a cross atop it, to remind the President, members of the Supreme Court, and Congress “that this is one nation under God’s judgment.”66 In the Grand Rapids Press Lakeshore supplement, the banner headline read “A Christian Man,” and the Rev. Ren Broekhuizen said, “Ed Prince was a gifted and developed individual who never took his eyes off the goal of honoring Jesus Christ in his life.”67 That pastor, a friend of Prince’s for two decades, would marry Edgar’s widow Elsa five years later.68