Sunshine State

by Sarah Gerard

  “Have you seen a racial shift in the membership as well?” says my husband.

  “Not here in Florida. Not really. Pretty white around here. That’s just how it works out.

  “But I would say we’re a pretty open club,” Dale continues. “What we do have are a lot of same-sex couples at the club. That’s become very common here. I think it’s pretty popular in Florida and Tampa Bay.”

  On our way back to the front, Dale walks us through the pro shop. Two men lean across the counter talking to each other among displays of golf attire and equipment. One of them, the general manager, introduces himself to my husband.

  “As long as you’re a golf member, you’re open to playing all the tournaments and games,” Dale says to me. “There’s something for the ladies, and then if couples play together, we have a couples’ golf on Sundays. We have a senior group, and then a young under-forty-year-old guy group.” He shows me a schedule pinned to a corkboard near the door. “These are kind of the core golf groups. And then we have a formal Men’s Golf Association as well, one tournament per month. If they win that tournament, there are parking spots up for grabs, if you want a nice parking spot—or some trophies. You know, when you love a game and you watch it on TV, to be able to still play it and go out there with a large group of guys, and then win a tournament? These guys are having a blast. They feel like they’re on the PGA Tour. That’s what it’s all about.”

  The general manager is making recommendations for the best seafood restaurants in the area. I tell him my parents live in Belleair.

  “If you can’t find good seafood around there, something’s wrong with you,” he says.

  On the way out, we pass a frame on the wall bearing a quote by Robert Dedman Sr., founder of ClubCorp. My husband stops to read it: “‘A club is a haven of refuge and accord in a world torn by strife and discord. A club is a place where kindred spirits gather to have fun and make friends. A club is a place of courtesy, good breeding, and good manners. A club is a place expressly for camaraderie, merriment, goodwill, and good cheer. A club humbles the mighty, draws out the timid, and casts out the sorehead. A club is one of the noblest inventions of mankind.’”

  “The owners liked it so much, they called me up and said, ‘I’m sending you something. I want you to put it on the wall,’” Dale says as we cross the parking lot toward a row of golf carts. “By the way,” he adds, “you should know that Florida clubs tend to be less stuffy than northern clubs.”

  In 2015, Forbes named the DeVos family twentieth on their list of America’s 50 Top Givers, with lifetime charity donations of $1.2 billion.77 Most of that money has stayed in West Michigan78—Amway’s headquarters are in Ada, and the DeVos and Van Andel families own or have bequeathed a considerable portion of Grand Rapids,79* and are often credited for catalyzing the revitalization of downtown.80 Of the $94 million the DeVos family gave in 2014 alone, $54 million of it stayed in Grand Rapids. Much of it went to public schools and Grand Rapids–based hospitals, arts programs, and faith-based organizations providing services to the homeless.81

  That same year over $4 million of DeVos’s money went to Hope College,82 a private liberal arts school affiliated with the Reformed Church in America—in which Rich DeVos was raised83—while $2.2 million went to Calvin College, associated with the Christian Reformed Church in North America.*84 Of the $90.9 million in philanthropic donations the DeVos family made in 2013, 13 percent went to churches and faith-based organizations:85 $7.5 million to the King’s College, a Christian college in New York City; $6.8 million to the Grand Rapids Christian Schools; and $1.05 million to the Chicago-based Willow Creek Community Church, an evangelical megachurch.86 As DeVos puts it in Simply Rich, “My Christian faith and outreach . . . remain strong after all these years. The Christian church and Christian education are high on our list of giving.”87 He goes on to say:

  Collectively, our family has given away millions, but if the government increases our taxes by a big number, that makes it tough to have that number to give away. If the government takes it, then I can’t give it—and I enjoy giving. My giving it puts the money in better hands than the government’s.88

  Each year, Rich DeVos attends The Gathering, a below-the-radar conference of hard-right Christian organizations and their biggest funders. Featured speakers have included the president and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, the president of Focus on the Family, and the head of the Family Research Council. The philanthropists in attendance are representatives of some of America’s wealthiest dynasties and family foundations, and of the National Christian Foundation, America’s largest provider of donor-advised funds given to Christian causes. Donors who meet at The Gathering dispense upwards of $1 billion a year in grants.89

  The family is also heavily invested in right-wing politics, earning comparisons to the Kochs90 for the enthusiasm with which they back Republican candidates like Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum,91 Jeb Bush,92 Scott Walker,93 and Marco Rubio,94 and their sizable donations to ultraconservative organizations like Focus on the Family95 and the Family Research Council,96 both of which promote Christian value-based public policy such as anti-abortion legislation and bans on same-sex marriage. In 2014, the DeVoses donated in the six figures to Michigan-based conservative think tanks including the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, which promotes free market economics within a Christian framework, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, also a supporter of free market economics. Elsewhere, conservative organizations that received DeVos funding of over a million dollars each include the American Enterprise Institute, another free market think tank; the Alliance Defending Freedom,97 the right’s preeminent legal defense fund;98 and the Heritage Foundation,99 which promotes free market economics and “traditional American values.”

  In the last quarter of 2015, DeVos family donations accounted for over half of those made to the Michigan Republican Party.100 Dick DeVos, Rich’s oldest son, who served as president of the company before passing the torch to his younger brother Doug, made an unsuccessful run for Michigan governor in 2006.101 His wife, Betsy, has served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party and finance chair for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and now chairs the board of directors of the American Federation for Children,102 a nonprofit which promotes giving students taxpayer-funded vouchers to attend private schools.

  On a more personal note, Rich DeVos was close friends with Gerald Ford.* They met when Ford was still a US congressman, and he regularly attended product launches when the company was still doing them out of DeVos’s basement. As far as US presidents go, DeVos was also partial to Ronald Reagan—who appointed DeVos as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee103 and to the AIDS commission, about which DeVos has said:

  When HIV first came out, President Reagan formed a commission and I was honored to be on that commission. I listened to 300 witnesses tell us that it was everybody else’s fault but their own. Nothing to do with their conduct, just that the government didn’t fix this disease. At the end of that I put in the document—it was the conclusion document from the commission—that actions have consequences and you are responsible for yours. AIDS is a disease people gain because of their actions. It wasn’t like cancer. We all made the exceptions for how you got it, by accident, that was all solved a long time ago.

  That’s when they started hanging me in effigy because I wasn’t sympathetic to all their requests for special treatment. Because at that time it was always someone else’s fault. I said, you are responsible for your actions, too, you know. Conduct yourself properly, which is a pretty solid Christian principle.104

  In Simply Rich, DeVos describes buying full-page advertisements for Reagan in popular magazines during his presidential runs because “we wanted the Amway distributors and their customers to know that we supported Reagan, in the hope that they would support him, too.” Adding, “We also thought the ads might further help Amway distributors recognize the importance of free enterprise to the
ir success.”105 This is not the only time Amway has encouraged its sales force to back its political agenda. In 1994, Amway Crown Ambassador and motivational mogul Dexter Yager used Amway’s extensive voice mail system106 to raise almost half of Amway distributor and “strong conservative”107 congresswoman Sue Myrick’s campaign funds when she ran for North Carolina’s ninth congressional district. The year Myrick was elected, Amway donated $1.3 million to the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau to pay for Republican “infomercials” airing on televangelist Pat Robertson’s Family Channel108 during the party’s August convention.

  Yager, for his part, knows something about influence. He is nicknamed the “Master Dream Builder”109 and commonly referred to as a “hero” of The Business. Like most of Amway’s top earners, he has been in it since its early days—Yager’s business now employs four million Amway team members in over forty countries.110

  Yager made a name for himself as the father of the “Yager System,” one of the first and most profitable motivational “tools” businesses run by Amway distributors111 (also called “tools scams” by detractors). Distributors produce motivational tapes and videos, or “tools,” and sell them directly to their downlines for immediate profit. Tools promote Amway’s free market philosophy but are not themselves Amway products—though the Yager Group is still today an Amway-approved training provider.112 The Charlotte Observer has said of Yager, “He sells not only soap but an ideology and a way of life. Admirers speak of him with reverence, as if his next plateau of Amway achievement were sainthood itself.”113 The title of Yager’s first book, Don’t Let Anybody Steal Your Dream, was a Gerard household motto. We said it to one another with a near-religious zeal—like we were speaking in high-fives. I still feel nostalgic for my childhood when I hear it.

  My husband rides in the front of the golf cart with Dale; I ride in the back. We strike out over the gently rolling fairways. “We’re a longer course,”114 says Dale. “Total length, if you play from back tees, seventy-one hundred yards. No one, not even the younger guys, play from the tips. I’m just going to show you the prettiest part and then head back so we stay dry.”

  We follow the right edge of the course, past houses hiding behind rows of palms: pool screens and burnt-orange rooftops flash by, one after another. Dale tells us that the country club owner’s philosophy is not to overseed the fairways and greens but to preserve their natural beauty through proper maintenance. The tee boxes are overseeded with rye grass because people are taking strokes off them every day.

  “We got some diehards here!” he says, slowing next to two older men preparing to tee off. They exchange hellos.

  “He’s a Clearwater fire chief,” Dale says as we pull away. “And he’s a pilot—a New Yorker.”

  A third of Bayou Club’s membership is seasonal. People join the club to make friends because it’s difficult finding a community when you’re not from the area. Here, they know, people will remember their name.

  A small waterway intersects the course ahead of us. We pull up to a wooden bridge, and Dale stops.

  “We’ve got a little bit of surge here,” he says. “Water levels are high. This is the Bayou Crossing Waterway. That way would take you out to Boca Ciega Bay, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. When there’s a huge tidal surge, these live bodies of water, the Bayou Crossing Waterway, feeds into, and overflows into, all these lakes and bayous around the course. And then when the water recedes, any fish and the water that gets in there gets trapped in there and can’t get out.”

  I snap a photo with my phone as we cross the bridge.

  “Tom Fazio is the golf course designer,” says Dale. “He was pretty green and environmental-friendly, kind of before it was all really cool, and that’s what he does, is he builds the course around the natural landscape without changing it.”

  “Doesn’t the golf course itself change it?” I say.

  “Does the course change the landscape?” says Dale.

  “Yeah, doesn’t the golf course itself change the landscape,” I say.

  “It does, but I think he tries to not change the natural landscape, but to design the course around it,” says Dale. “Like, all these holes going right next to the Bayou Crossing Waterway. It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s part of it.”

  We drive on.

  “And then the bayous, the natural bayous, having those as, um, hazards to hit over and around,” he says. “It’s just fun.”

  “I bet there are some nice balls in these bayous,” says my husband.

  “You know, we actually have a guy who’s on contract with us. He pays us an annual fee to remove the balls from our lakes and ponds.”

  “What kinds of species do you see out here?” I say.

  “A lot of mullet, some sea trout,” says Dale. “Birds, some blue heron, some osprey, ibis. Definitely some gators. We don’t reach too far into the bushes to get our balls.”

  Dale hangs a left, and we circle back toward the clubhouse. Halfway there, he slows by a pond. A family of ducks crosses the course and alights on the water.

  “What happens if we’re members for six or seven years and suddenly we can’t afford the membership fee anymore?” says my husband.

  “Then you can resign,” says Dale. “We have a medical leave program if there’s a medical issue. If it’s a money thing, it’s financial. We do lose members, but that’s not something either you or we can control.”

  Back in the clubhouse, Dale shows us the locker rooms and the administrative offices, pointing out the one for the Bayou Club community association. He pauses before a plaque outside his office, displaying several rows of names.

  “One of our traditions is this Hole in One Club,” he says. “We don’t use this plaque anymore, but we do make a plaque with a picture of the hole and the date you made it and your name. Some people go their whole lives and never make a hole in one, so we make a big deal out of it. You have to have a witness—you come back to the clubhouse, your witness has to verify with the pro shop. Then we open a free bar tab for you for the rest of the day. All golf members are part of it, so the insurance on it is: If someone makes a hole in one, every golf member is charged one dollar. So, that creates a three-hundred-thirty-dollar credit that you will receive. If you don’t use it at the bar, you’ll get a certificate to use around the club for anything else.”

  “I’ve always wanted to make a hole in one,” says my husband.

  “It’s a rare thing,” says Dale. “Sure, there’s a lot of skill—you have to hit it just right—but in the end, it’s kind of luck. It’s kind of a little bit of luck, too. Maybe eighty percent skill, twenty percent luck.”

  “Have you ever gotten one?” says my husband.

  “No,” says Dale. “I’ve only been playing seriously for six or seven years, and I don’t have much time, working in hospitality. But I love playing at Bayou Club. You join a private club hoping that during season when every other golf course is swamped—I mean, we own a public course nearby, and they’re running on six-minute tee times. They’re herded through there like cattle. It’s tough during season, and it’s not enjoyable golf. Because if you’re playing golf, especially if you’re kind of a quick player, when you run into someone else and then you have to stop and you have to wait for those people to play ahead of you, to get out of the way, it interrupts your rhythm playing the game.”

  He walks us to the front with a membership application. We promise we’ll return it to him within the week—then walk across the parking lot back toward our Porsche.

  My parents more or less broke even in Amway.115 They didn’t lose any money; they also didn’t make any. I learned recently that my mom was against it from the start. “She never wanted to do it, never warmed up to it,” says my dad. She believed it was a cult,116 and wasn’t happy about giving their time and money to it. She hated Amway’s right-wing political propaganda and evangelical bullying. She hated that it kept the two of them from spending time with me. “She wasn’t going to leave me,”11
7 my dad says. “But there was tension because she didn’t want to go do these things.” Even as he admits he agreed with her on some level, he wanted to believe that The Business was viable.

  In four years, they built up their downline to something like forty people. It was a cumbersome organization, but the people they were working with, save for one, were all honest. A lot of them had families we’d grown close to—the kids were my friends. I’d go to their houses on the weekends, and after school, and whenever my parents needed a babysitter. After we left Amway, I never saw them again.

  In the beginning, my parents put between ten and fifteen hours a week into their business—per the company’s recommendation. But over time, my dad’s enthusiasm began to wear off. “You say to yourself, ‘What the hell for?’” he says now. “So that somebody can come in and then not return your calls? You take them to a meeting and there’s a jerk up there who’s embarrassing? I had no way, no avenue to get people in there and get them excited.”

  The embarrassing jerk was my parents’ upline, Vincent, who had Emerald status. I don’t remember this man. My dad says, “He was a creepy guy, just an incredibly creepy guy. I don’t know how else to describe him . . . You actually felt, after being around the guy, that you needed to take a shower. Nobody wanted to be around him. He was a jerk, he was a liar. Just a despicable person.”

  This is not the man who brought my dad in but a man somewhere above him. He was what The Business calls a “phony Emerald.” To meet the criteria for the pin level, he’d force the people in his organization to order extra product in order to grow his volume and push him across the finish line each month—not that he turned much of a profit doing so, as he had to pass it all on to his own upline. “Well, the Emerald pin doesn’t mean anything unless your organization is solid,” said my dad. “So you got a pin—you’re not making the money.” Eventually, my dad says, Vincent was stripped of the Emerald pin because he couldn’t maintain the sales by force alone.