Jerry Rich, the man behind the myth
As the Solheim Cup draws international attention to Rich Harvest Farms, its typically private owner steps into the spotlight
He is my neighbor.
A man of the earth.
(Heather Eidson/Staff Photographer)
(Heather Eidson/Staff Photographer)
(Heather Eidson/Staff Photographer)
An inventor and an athlete. A perfectionist of impressive intelligence and wealth whose last name defines his financial status but does little to reveal the private family guy behind the tall, lanky frame.
Jerry Rich is also a man of mystery -- aware of some, but not all, of the many myths that swirl about him.
The most famous, of course, is that he invented the bar code.
That's a wildly popular one. And it wasn't until this interview, while sitting at the breakfast table overlooking Rich's exquisite golf and farm estate in Sugar Grove, that even he gained insight into how that rumor was conceived.
"I think I have the answer to that," said his son, Keith. "When the family first moved out here to Sugar Grove (in 1989), Mom's car had a vanity plate with her initials: B-A-R."
The millionaire and his wife of 47 years are both surprised and amused.
"I never thought of that," laughed Betty Ann Rich. "But it makes sense. ... I'm sure that's how that rumor all got started."
And so let's set the facts straight once and for all: Jerry Rich did not invent the bar code, which was actually the brainchild of Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver in 1952.
Back then, Rich was only a 14-year-old kid, just starting to play competitive golf at York High School. He was a good basketball player, too. But from the time he began picking up caddying jobs at age 9, his love for the game would supersede all other athletic endeavors and, in fact, go on to define his legacy.
Another myth debunked: Rich, who allows the Northern Illinois University golf team to use his elite course for its home meets, did not play for NIU. But he did get a degree in mathematics from the university a few miles up the road on I-88.
No doubt that education helped Rich, along with his father Anthony, create a communication system in 1989 that revolutionized the way Wall Street received its information. And in doing so, the Riches became very rich indeed.
It's a pretty amazing story, even for someone like me whose brain cells shrivel into fetal positions whenever anyone discusses broadband or microprocessors.
"I don't understand technology," I reluctantly tell my host. Even worse, I later admit, "I don't play golf."
I see his eyebrows shoot up on that last confession. So I try to redeem myself by mentioning my childhood raised on a farm and how, as an adult, I bought a home bordering Rich's own vast acreage off Dugan Road, in large part because of my rural Kansas roots.
A smile lights up his face -- and I can only assume I've scored at least a point or two. One thing you have to know about Jerry Rich: He attained success by following his passions.
His interest in mathematics and engineering made him wealthy. But it's his love of the land that led to his purchase of 1,700 farm acres west of Sugar Grove. And it was his penchant for golf that turned many of those acres into one of the most spectacular private courses in the nation.
From Aug. 17 to 21, the international golf community will turn its spotlight on that little bit of heaven when Rich Harvest hosts the LPGA Solheim Cup, pitting the best U.S. women golfers against Europe's most elite.
Not bad for a man who didn't invent the bar code.
Hooked on golf
The first thing you notice about Jerry Rich is his height -- 6-foot-5 -- and eyes so blue you immediately see why his wife fell for him almost half a century ago.
Jerry and Betty Rich, along with oldest son Keith, are finishing up breakfast in the second- floor dining area of the pavilion of his magnificent estate. In back of the building, there's a garage that houses Rich's elaborate vintage- and modern-car collections that have included Ferraris, LamborÂghinis and a Rolls Royce that once taxied Princess Di around.
But we're not here to talk about engines, no matter how pretty or powerful or pricey. And Rich makes it perfectly clear what the other parameters of the interview will include.
"I don't want this story to be about me or about my family," he orders like a man who is used to having them followed. "I want this to be about the Solheim Cup, and how it's taking place right here in Sugar Grove."
But to appreciate how this international event arrived in our backyards (mine, literally; yours, figuratively), you have to understand how the 18-hole course came to be. And to understand Rich Harvest, you have to know a lot more about the man who created it,one hole at a time.
Long before he was a golfer or a business tycoon or a philanthropist, Jerry Rich was a little boy fascinated with the good earth.
He, too, comes by it naturally. Seventy-one years ago, Jerry Rich was born in tiny Spring Valley, Ill. -- and still has family who farm around that LaSalle County community. His dad took a job in Chicago when he was 2. But he's quick to point out the joy he felt when the family made frequent trips to visit the relatives down on the farm.
"That's where I always felt at home," he says.
At age 5, the Rich family moved from the city to Villa Park and while at York High School, Jerry took up what would become his second passion. With impressive physical height and coordination, it was almost a given he'd be good at basketball. But his father was surprised -- and not pleasantly so -- when he took up golf.
"He thought it was the biggest waste of time," Rich says with a chuckle.
His fascination with the sport also goes deep into his childhood when, as a 9-year-old, he would bike to Brookwood Country Club in Wood Dale and watch from outside the gates as the nattily dressed gentlemen swung their clubs. Then one day, a man in a cart pulled up next to him and asked if he wanted to caddy. After five minutes of instruction -- the main one being to keep his mouth shut when the golfers were swinging -- Jerry Rich was hooked.
He just didn't know how badly.
Golf wasn't his only interest during his teen years. While in high school, Rich and five of his friends formed a model airplane club called The Fly Boys that went on to win national and international awards. After graduating from York High in 1956, Rich enrolled at NIU. His major was math and physics, but his minor was earth science.
"If we were supposed to pick a place to survey," he says, "I'd always pick a farm."
Husband, inventor
While Rich put golf on the back burner in college, it was in DeKalb where he was introduced to what would become another lifelong passion: a tall, beautiful education major by the name of Betty Ann. They met on a double date to the theater production of "South Pacific." She was paired up with his friend Ken; he was on a blind date with Betty's roommate.
"I saw (Betty) walk down the stairs and I thought, 'Wow!'" he remembers with a wide smile. "The four of us went out on the town, but I told Ken that (Betty) was too tall for him ... I just never thought she'd go out with me."
He and Betty married on June 6, 1961 -- the same day they graduated from NIU. "We received our diplomas that morning, then had to rush home (to Betty's home in Downers Grove) for the wedding."
After graduation, Rich had a chance to work for Amoco in South America for $18,000 a year. But he didn't want to stray that far from home. Besides, his dad needed a hand in the communication business he had founded, Rich Inc.
It turned out to be a most productive move.
Anthony Rich was beginning to integrate both audio and video data into what was then called wideband and installing the systems in schools, hospitals and police stations. The business took off in 1975 when Rich, who had just completed work on a medical center in Brooklyn, N.Y., was invited by a friend to visit the trading room for Chase Manhattan on Wall Street. The traders, he noticed, were all trying to use data transmitted from large, cumbersome terminals all stacked on top of each other.
That's when "the light bulb went on," Rich says. "I knew we could use the same kind of switch in our industry to streamline the process for them."
Rich Inc. built a prototype, an operating system that could perform multiple applications and allow information into the computers from a software keypad. Soon Jerry Rich was selling his product up and down Wall Street. And over the next nine years, the company expanded from 30 employees out of its Franklin Park location to 1,000 throughout North America.
After 48-year-old Jerry and his father sold the company to ReutÂers in London in 1984, the younger Rich stayed on as a consultant and watched his innovation go global. But before retiring a few years later, his work week often included three or four trips to New York as the business grew by leaps and bounds.
And as he was flying out of the airport in Sugar Grove, he couldn't help but look down and marvel at the green fields, dark soil, wooded valleys and meandering creeks.
Rich, who had been living in the Hinsdale area since 1967, asked his pilot about the farms stretching out below him -- who owned them and which ones were for sale.
Turns out, it's much easier to take a tech business global than it is to take a boy off the farm. Especially if his name is Jerry Rich.
From farmland to estate
When Rich was deciding where to purchase land, the Sugar Grove properties impressed him for numerous reasons, including proximity to a major interstate, the airport and railroad tracks. But as an engineer and a farmer, something else caught his eye -- three creeks that ran through this slew of farms that included the 600-acre Alexander property straddling both sides of Dugan Road.
"One thing I learned over the years," Rich says. "You have to control the watershed."
So he got with a Realtor and was soon putting a deal together for the Alexander property -- along with six other farms.
"I had seven contracts going at once," he remembers. "It got to be a little crazy."
Rich said he had a handshake deal with one of the farmers, who controlled the creek in the wooded area at the center of the plan -- until the man figured out what he was trying to do and held out for more money. An agreement eventuallywas reached, but at the buyer's expense. Not one to forget easily, Rich allowed the farmer to rent the property for a year while the man's new home was being built. But when that lease expired and the renter asked for an extension, I'll let you guess what the answer was.
"If you dig yourself a hole," he says matter of factly, "there's a good chance you'll get pushed into it."
The farmhouse off Dugan Road became the family's weekend retreat until they finally moved to Sugar Grove in 1992. And the first of many rumors was spawned.
Perhaps even before the bar code myth, there was the one that featured Jerry Rich in the role of Texas oil baron. It probably had something to do with him "wearing my cowboys boots to the Jewel," he says.
And here's another fact that may surprise you: His estate is named after a boat he saw in London while dining there after closing the Reuters deal.
"I turned to Betty and said, 'Maybe someday we'll use that name.'"
'My own Augusta'
Before we go any further, let's talk about why Jerry Rich decided to build his very own golf course. Rumor has it he was playing at Augusta National and asked a friend who was a member of this most elite of clubs to sponsor him as a member. When the man responded with a veiled but polite negative -- "Don't ask me again, Jerry" -- Rich went home and told his wife, "I'm going to build my own Augusta."
Good story, isn't it? And this one happens to be true.
Rich continued to golf at Brookwood after moving to western Kane County -- he was the first caddy to enjoy full membership -- but quickly realized that "if I could build one hole on my farm, I could at least practice my game."
Rich, who kept shoe boxes full of golf course designs he had doodled over the years, initially hired someone to help him with the work, then soon realized he was better off doing it himself.
But after building that practice hole, he also realized "that was no fun." So, using a father/son team who specialized in excavating basements, he built another hole. Then another. And another. Ever the perfectionist, Rich continued to massage his nine-hole course, and then called Golf Digest to see if they would come out and rate what he knew was something special.
Their response: Sorry, you realÂly need 18 holes.
Says Rich, "So I figured I might as well finish it," especially after purchasing another 60-acre farm off Granart Road.
Rich easily admits he's "never satisfied." And he likes to "change it up enough" so his guests never know they are playing the same hole. But perfectionism, as Jerry Rich well knows, pays off. Rich Harvest was named the fifth-best new private course in a 1999 Golf Digest rating. And when it broke through the top 100 in America in 2002, Rich "thought I'd died and gone to heaven." In 2005, it went to 45th, and soon became known not only for its beauty but the challenge it presented.
Currently the club is limited to 50 members -- count Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson among the privileged -- although Rich is thinking about expanding his national membership to 100.
But perhaps Jerry Rich is most proud of his not-so-famous guests. He's heavily involved in the Illinois Junior Golf Association he co-founded with another of his York High buddies, Roger Alsip, who has since passed away. And he's dedicated to bringing the game to as many kids as possible through his "Hook a Kid on Golf" program that, over the last decade, has served some 100,000 boys and girls. His philosophy: Teaching kids to hit a straight tee shot, as well as the rules and etiquette of the gentlemen's game, will help keep them on the straight and narrow.
Rich says when he began dreaming of bringing a major tournament to Sugar Grove, he gravitated toward the Solheim Cup because of its own junior tournament. All the proceeds Rich Harvest will receive from the event, which expects to draw 150,000 people over the week, will go toward this youth association so dear to him.
'Successful in all aspects'
Since landing the Solheim in 2004 -- Rich persuaded Dennis Hastert and Rich Daley to write letters for him -- he and his staff have been working non-stop to improve upon perfection.
In addition to being a perfectionist, Rich admits he's also a micro-manager who thinks nothing of picking up wayward cigarette butts or twigs, whether they would land on his work floor or golf course. He's a "no-nonsense guy," Betty Rich says. "When he gets into something, he doesn't do it halfway ... he pays attention to detail."
It's the way Rich tackles all aspects of his life. Not only did he stir the pot on zoning issues when he moved to Sugar Grove, he became a vocal opponent against Menards coming to town (it didn't) and an equally vocal advocate for building a new elementary school (it was). And most recently, the Rich family donated 20 acres for the construction of St. Katharine Drexel Catholic Church, in memory of Rich's mother, who died at age 44 from breast cancer. The family also donated $370,000 for the new technology learning center of the Sugar Grove Library, named after Rich's only sibling, Janice, who also succumbed to cancer at age 29.
In addition to the cash spread throughout the community, Village President Sean Michaels appreciates the innovation and, yes, the clout Rich brings to the municipal table. Michaels describes Rich as a gracious "behind the scenes" guy who wants the village to be top of the line.
"He'll challenge me on things," he adds. "And that's the way it should be."
Keith Rich, the oldest of Jerry's two sons and general manager of the estate, has always been in awe of his father's wisdom. "But it's his ethics, his morals, the way he is with my mom, the way he treats other people that impresses me most," Keith notes. "He's one of those guys who is so successful in all aspects of life."
For Jerry Rich, it all comes down to doing what you love. As an example, he cites the five friends from his teenage Fly-Boy days -- all from blue-collar families -- who went on to become highly successful in fields related to their hobbies.
"Too many people go through life not doing what they enjoy," he says. "We all followed our passions. If you do that, then you will be successful."
