GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — It was 1997 — Rich DeVos' heart was failing and he needed a new one.
As he sat day after day in a London Apartment awaiting a transplant, Peter Secchia's daily faxes kept DeVos in touch with things back home in those pre-internet days.
“Every day I'd come home and cut up the newspaper and take out the best stories,” said Secchia, describing how he would paste the articles to a piece of paper and fax them to DeVos. That, along with a joke or two, solidified an already strong friendship.
“As a man to man, I will tell you. I loved him,” he said. “I loved him like a father. He had more influence on me than anything I’ve ever done.”
Secchia says you would be hard-pressed to come up with a positive adjective that couldn't be used to describe DeVos.