By WKTV Staff
ken@wktv.org
Birgit Klohs, president and CEO of The Right Place, Inc., was at the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan annual luncheon to be honored with the group’s locally-focused inaugural Hillman-Orr Award, at the same event when the inaugural Vandenberg Prize for work on the world stage was presented.
The Vandenberg Prize went to retired Ambassador Jon M. Huntsman, who was honored in person at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, where a large crowd was in attendance Tuesday, Jan. 14.
But Klohs, who was raised in post-war Germany, spoke poignantly in her acceptance speech about Michigan Sen. Arthur Vandenberg (1881-1951), who forged bipartisan support for the Marshall Plan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and was appointed one of the first U.S. delegates to the then new United Nations.
“I grew up in the safety of NATO. I grew up with … (a German economy) predicated on the Marshall Plan,” Klohs said as she accepted her award but also honored the Vandenberg legacy. “So for that, every time I walk by the (senator’s) statue (near Rosa Parks Circle), I salute a little ‘Thank you’.”
But Klohs’ path of learning about the man who was a key figure in the Marshall Plan and NATO was not simple.
Hank Meijer “wrote the definitive book on a senator I’d never heard of when I moved here,” Klohs said. “When I first met Hank, many years ago, he said to me ‘Birgit, there needs to be a Vandenberg Square in Germany.’ And I’m like ‘Who is Vandenberg?’ Another Dutch guy? And he’s like ‘No. Let me tell you about Senator Vandenberg.’
“And I was stunned. Growing up in Germany, in a divided Germany, we always lived in the shadow of the Soviet Union. Right? We all learned about the Marshall fund, and how it helped West Germany and the rest of Europe get back on its feet. Learned about NATO. But I’d never heard of the senator who was really the person behind the scenes the made the Marshall fund happen, who made NATO happen, who made the UN happen.
“And who brought along senators who were isolationists. (Other senators) who said ‘It is 1945, we won the war. We all go home and be done with it and leave those Europeans to themselves.’ But he (Vandenberg) had learned that after World War I, that didn’t work. He, who was an isolationist himself, became a globalist. And, frankly, we could use more globalists today.”
Vandenberg was also the inspiration for founding the local World Affairs Council in 1949 by Grand Rapids attorney (and later Federal Judge) Douglas Hillman and businessman Edgar Orr, for whom the Hillman-Orr Award was named, according to the council.
The Hillman-Orr Award was presented to Klohs by Renee Tappen, market president for Bank of America.
“There is likely nobody in this room who has not heard from Birgit Klohs on the importance of global economic ties between West Michigan and world partners,” Tappen said. “Under her leadership, as the CEO of 32 years, The Right Place has created 47,000 new jobs and spurred nearly 5 billion dollars in new investment in our local the economy.
“Birgit is a leading economic development strategist, collaborates with our local, our national and our state government on critical issues related to economic development.”
Klohs, however, pointed out that much of her work is encouraging local leaders to embrace internationalism, in business and in all things.
“I also wanted to spread the word in our region, that embracing international, that embracing people from other parts of the world, will enrich us. It does not make us poorer, it makes us richer,” she said. “And that, in fact, your competition today is no longer in Iowa or Indiana. But it is in Mexico. And it is in India. And it is in China.
“The more we embrace that competition, we will be stronger as a region for it. And so, the World Affairs Council has really modeled this thinking for the last 70 years. … It has always been the strength of this community to gather and embrace new thoughts.”
The entire award ceremony is available on YouTube at this link.
