Berlin Wall pieces in Michigan

All three Michigan sites are in Grand Rapids, and all three come from one man. In November 1989 the grocer Fred Meijer saw a press photograph of a segment lifted out at Potsdamer Platz with his own name sprayed on it, contacted the New Jersey company selling the Wall in the United States for the GDR's trade firm, drove there and found it. He bought two more while he was there and gave one each to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum and to Grand Valley State University; his own has stood in the entrance of the Van Andel Museum Center since 1994. The Ford segment was presented to the former president in 1991, with Helmut Schmidt and James Callaghan present, for the Helsinki Final Act he counted as his greatest achievement in office; the Federal Foundation records a purchase for 35,000 dollars rather than a gift, and both accounts are kept. The university's was dedicated in 1992 outside its library on the Allendale campus, 17 km west of downtown.