Calvin College Remembers Two Professors

Services have been held for two Calvin College professors who died in recent days from cancer.

The first service took place on Saturday for Calvin College music professor Bert Polman who died following a lengthy battle with cancer.

Polman, 68, served at Calvin since 2005 as chair of the music department and as a senior fellow for the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship (CICW). He is survived by his wife, Betty, three children and four grandchildren.

Calvin professor Bill Vande Kopple died unexpectedly on July 3, following a pancreatic cancer diagnosis just a week earlier. Services were held on Monday for Vande Kopple, 63, who taught in Calvin's English department for more than 30 years. He served as co-chair of the department since 2008.

In a letter to the Calvin community, English department co-chair Elizabeth Vander Lei wrote, "Bill was a great and gracious presence among us: he was a much-loved professor, a prolific scholar, a wise mentor, and a good friend."

Both of the professors were well-respected and accomplished in their fields.

Prior to coming to Calvin, Bert Polman taught at Ontario Bible College (1977-1985) and Redeemer University College (1985-2004).

“Communities will miss his voice,” said music department co-chair Tim Steele. “He was a very quiet presence, but a very large one.”

Polman’s physical voice was but a whisper. A virus took his voice in 1975, leaving him unable to sing or speak before large crowds without amplification, making his life’s work all the more remarkable.

“That’s the key part of the poignancy of his life,” said John Witvliet, CICW director. “He loved congregational song, but he himself could not sing.”

Polman was a highly regarded musicologist and hymnologist, writing and editing numerous hymn texts and harmonizations. He was a member of the editorial team for five hymnals, including the Christian Reformed Church’s 1987 Psalter Hymnal, for which he wrote the companion Handbook. He later edited a collection of 256 Hymns For Worship, which was published in 2010.

A 1972 graduate of Calvin College, Vande Kopple earned a masters and PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago in 1973 and 1980 respectively.

At Calvin, his teaching interests included rhetoric and composition, stylistics, linguistics, the history of the English Language and Secondary Education Teaching Theories and Methods, just to name a few.

Vande Kopple was also well respected outside the classroom, both by his colleagues at Calvin and those in broader writing circles. He published articles in dozens of education and English journals and enjoyed writing creative non-fiction. Some of his favorite writings combined his love for fishing and his family, including The Catch: Families Fishing, and Faith, The Release: More Tales of Families, Fishing, and Faith and The Lure, Still More Stories of Families, Fishing and Faith.

Vande Kopple is survived by his wife, Wanda; his sons Jon (Tiffany), Joel and Jason; and his grandson, Kincaid.