A local memorial service for Rachel VanderWerf, widow of former Hope College President Calvin VanderWerf, will be held on Sunday, April 30, at 2 p.m. in Mulder Chapel at Western Theological Seminary.

          The Rev. William C. Hillegonds of Brighton, who
  was chaplain at Hope College from 1965 to 1978, will be
  officiating.  The public is invited.
          VanderWerf died at age 81 on Sunday, March 5, at
  her home in Gainesville, Fla.  Her husband, who died on July
  18, 1988, was president of Hope from 1963 to 1970.
          While at the college, she had helped organize
  Hope's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.  Among the many projects
  she spearheaded at Hope was the college's effort to restore
  historic Marigold Lodge when the college acquired the Lake
  Macatawa property in 1969.
          She had remained active in the life of the college
  in the years since her husband had been president.
          Calvin and Rachel VanderWerf were both recognized
  when the "Physics/Math" building was named for him during
  Homecoming Weekend on Oct. 9, 1981.
          Among other activities, she had been on the
  Steering Committee for the college's "Hope in the Future"
  fundraising campaign in the early 1990s, and regularly
  returned to campus to meet the students supported through
  the Calvin A. VanderWerf '37 Scholarship Fund established at
  Hope in her husband's honor.  The college honored her with
  an appreciation dinner on Sept. 25, 1998.
          She was born in Bluffton, Ohio, in 1919.  She was
  the youngest of three girls born to Ohio State University
  professor Harry Gehman Good and his wife Maude Warye Good.
          She graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State
  University in 1940, and married Calvin VanderWerf in
  Columbus, Ohio, in 1942.
          The couple settled in Lawrence, Kan., where Calvin
  was a chemistry professor at the University of Kansas and
  Rachel worked for the YWCA.  She often said that the
  achievement of which she was most proud was the couple's
  civil rights work in Lawrence.  They were founding members
  of the Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy, a
  group of community leaders who worked to end segregation
  practices in Lawrence during the 1950s.
          In Holland, in addition to her activities on
  behalf of Hope, she was instrumental in organizing a voting
  campaign to pass a mill increase to fund the city's public
  schools.
          In 1972, the couple moved to Gainesville, when
  Calvin was named dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at
  the University of Florida.  Rachel started a women's
  clothing retail business with her daughter Julie in
  Gainesville; the concern later expanded to Ocala, Fla.
  Rachel was active in the local chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma,
  a friend of the Harn Museum and an elder of the First
  Presbyterian Church in Gainesville.
          Survivors include her children, Gretchen
  VanderWerf of Boulder, Colo., Klasina VanderWerf of Denver,
  Colo., Julie Hill of Gainesville, Lisa Hawkins of Palm Beach
  Gardens, Fla., Pieter VanderWerf of Boston, Mass., and Marte
  Singerman of Miami Beach, Fla.; seven grandchildren; and two
  sisters-in-law, Anne Wabeke and Joan Brieve of Holland.
          Mulder Chapel faces the former 12th Street near
  College Avenue.