ORNEAL KOOYERS

PO BOX 1765

GRASS VALLEY, CA 95945

Ph: 530 272 8170, okpimusa@ncws.com

20 July 2009

Dad (Jacob Kooyers) was born in the the Muskegon-Fremont region of western Michigan in 1896 and Mom was born in The Netherlands in 1901 and came to America in 1912 when 11.  Alice Margaret Van Spronsen settled in Grand Rapids with her parents Cornelius and Anne Van Spronsen.  Grandpa Cornelius was booked on the Titanic and, according to Mom, Grandma had a dream which foretold disaster, so he booked on an earlier ship when she insisted that Grandpa change his plans (a considerable feat with Grandpa liking to do things his way). 

After marrying Mom in the early twenties, Dad attended Calvin College in Grand Rapids and then they both went to Allentown, Pennsylvania (with infant Gordon) where Dad attended Westminster Seminary just after Princeton Seminary had its liberal-conservative controversy.  Dad was probably more of a student than a preacher and I remember his libraries (which he venerated) and his pipe and cigar smoke as a youngster.  During the cold winter days while he prepared his sermons I used to go into his study to read and enjoy the warmth of his stove. 

In the early thirties we moved to Athens, Wisconsin where Dad was the pastor of the Presbyterian church and the one in Goodrich, ten miles north.  As a small boy I particularly remember a few things about Athens: the activities of the sawmill not far from where we lived, the logging train that hauled logs on an ice track, the logs piling up in the large mill pond in the spring floods, and swatting frogs with a broom handle for the frog legs Mom fried.  Once Gordon and I caught a 31 pound snapping turtle we sold at a restaurant in town for fifty cents.  In 1936 we moved to Oxford, Wisconsin in the Chandler where Dad became pastor of the Presbyterian Church which had just gone through a split; I was in the fifth grade. 

I remember Oxford for its cold spring-fed Neenah Creek and pond, playing football on the school sand lot, shooting friends and wasp nests with rubber guns, hitch hiking out to Parker Lake three miles west to swim on hot summer days, skating on the sidewalks after an ice storm, and our first trip to California in 1939 in the Nash car.  Once during a thunder storm the family was sitting at lunch and I saw a lightning burst go from the telephone out through the door to the pump on the porch passing less than two feet from those sitting on the other side of the table.  That fall we moved to Hixton, Wisconsin and I remember it as the longest and most enjoyble Wisconsin autumn ever; the snow did not arrive until December 15.

Dad was responsible for two churches, the one in Hixton and the other in Sechlerville.  Eighth grade teacher Mr. Brown was one of the best.  The two story grammar school was located midway between the two towns and two other students and I would run three quarters of a mile home for lunch whether ninety degrees or 20 below. 

Hixton was a lot of fun for a boy loving the outdoors.  The Trempealeau River ran through town just across the street from home where we swam and romped in the lowlands.  Once a flood came through and washed out the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) bridge built upriver, and I used their planks to build a suspension bridge that made use of old electric wire and local trees that outlasted all the subsequent high waters. 

The war was on, so Dad encouraged me to raise chickens.  In the back of church property was an unused horse shelter, a left over from horse and buggy days, and he suggested I make use of the building for the chickens.  There I first learned the stupidity of FDR's socialism.  The CCC had a pile of used lumber across the river, so I asked if I could have it for erecting the chicken shed, but they turned me down cold.  I considered stealing it piece by piece carrying the planks across my bridge, but decided against it.  Three days later they burned it.  Consequently I made walls of compacted corn stalks to shelter the chickens from winter's icy blasts. 

Next year Dad let me order 300 chicks, and we used one of the manse's upstairs bed rooms and light bulbs to keep the chicks warm before moving them out into the horse and buggy shed.  In the summer of that year, 1943, Dad and Mom said we were moving to South Range, a town near Superior, so we took the "broilers" in the truck with us to sell at the Superior market.  On the outskirts of Superior Dad ministered to three churches, and I attended my last year at Superior Central High School.  The fall of 1943 I shot three deer for the family's and a parishioner's larder (much appreciated during the war's meat rationing) before being drafted into the service in early 1945. 

After the war Dad, Mom, Gordon, Gerald, and Marcia went to California to fulfill Dad's dream.  In 1936 Grandpa Cornelius had paid Dad's train fair to Sunnyvale, California to marry my uncle Art and Aunt Betty, and when Dad walked around the prune and apricot fruit ranch in shirt sleeves in December, he decided California was next to heaven's border land.  After arriving in California the family moved to Mendocino on the coast north of San Francisco.  The picturesque high steepled building where Dad preached is one of the oldest Presbyterian churches in California and Mom was asked to work as a clerk in the town's lone bank. 

After that calling Dad retired in San Jose and later the two of them made a trip to Papua New Guinea in the early seventies to visit us in the late stages of Bible translation before we formed Pacific Island Ministries in 1977.  Dad departed to be with the Lord in 1983 and Mom did the same in 1987.  Both were buried in a south San Jose cemetery. 

I think of Dad as one who first instilled love for God's Word and the catechism.  And I distinctly remember the first time Mom taught the Ten Commandments when I was a small boy in Athens.  I owe them much for my appreciation of Scripture and the need to promote it. 

In His grace,

Orneal Kooyers