Jon DeHaan

DeHaan now lives in Naples, Florida. On December 10, 1994, DeHaan married Deborah Crawford, who had worked as a legal writer for the Norfolk, Virginia law firm used by DeHaan’s older brother, Martin. Jon DeHaan’s Dutch grandfather settled in Holland, Michigan, in the late 1870s. In 1930 DeHaan’s maternal grandfather, William R. Holden, founded Holden Red Stamps. In 1966 Curt Carlson, founder of Gold Bond Stamp Co., the original core business of the Carlson Companies, Inc. (parent company of Radisson Hotels Corporation), purchased Holden Red Stamps. DeHaan used funds from his Holden Red Stamp inheritance to capitalize RCI. Jon’s parents, attorney William DeHaan and his wife, Kathleen, were living in Ypsilanti, Michigan, when Jon was born in 1940. He has two older brothers. William, 66, a retired General Motors executive, lives on Marco Island, Florida. Martin, 60, owns Creative Inns in Virginia Beach. In 1950, the DeHaan family moved to Birmingham, Michigan. In 1963, Jon received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in economics from Claremont Men's College (now called Claremont McKenna College) in Claremont, California. In 1966 he earned a Masters in Business Administration degree from Indiana University in Bloomington. Then he spent three years completing class work for a Ph.D. degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, but he left in 1969 without completing his dissertation to work for a Los Angeles firm, Economic Research Associates (ERA). The firm specialized in recreational feasibility studies. DeHaan left ERA to help his brother Martin create the first licensed recreational campground for Holiday Inns Travel Park, a subsidiary of Holiday Inns. Several months after that, he left Holiday Inns to create and direct a system of nationally franchised campgrounds for a joint venture between Brynmawr Corporation and Ramada Inns. At the beginning of 1971, DeHaan used his knowledge of proprietary campgrounds to help Chase Continental Corporation develop additional resorts in Maryland and Virginia. In 1971, while working for Chase, he helped a committee of American Land Development Association (ALDA) members form Camp Coast To Coast, an exchange program for owners of recreational-vehicle campground plots. Participants in this effort included attorney and accountant Denny Brown and Martin Price of Yogi Bear Jellystone Campgrounds, based in Baltimore, Maryland. Later ALDA sold Camp Coast To Coast to Denny Brown. During 1969 and 1970, falling campground sales had paralleled the declining stock market. Starting in 1970, DeHaan volunteered hundreds of hours of his time to ALDA to help establish Camp Coast to Coast. Each campground paid a developer fee to join Camp Coast To Coast and sold Coast to Coast camper memberships. Its camper members paid a $1-a-night reservation fee. Then a Texas oil man Bob Motter approached Chase Continental Corporation to develop the west Texas resort community of Point Venture, west of Austin on Lake Travis. He continued to consult in Texas, but lived in Indianapolis. RCI was incorporated first in Virginia, and later in Indiana. From 1974 to May 1989, DeHaan served as RCI’s chief executive officer, president, and majority stockholder. RCI sales increased 10,000 percent, from $1 million in 1979 to $100 million in 1989. In 16 years, RCI’s original $50,000 capitalization increased 2,700 times to $135 million. Since leaving RCI in 1991, Jon DeHaan has stayed informed about and interested in the industry.