LEGACY
THE GIFT OF
Education BY AMY WHITE ’06
Pictured here as teenagers, John S., Richard, and David Vander Heide all have scholarships established in their names.
In the early 1950s, Jane King Vander Heide ‘71 had planned to attend Michigan State University. When her plans changed, a friend recommended Calvin. She hadn’t previously considered it as an option, but “it was within walking distance of my house,” Vander Heide explained, “so I enrolled.” Coming from a Baptist background, she says she hardly knew what to expect from the Christian Reformed school down the road, but the decision ultimately had a profound impact on her life. Her first year, Vander Heide met her future husband, John Vander Heide ’53, who was a third-generation Calvin student. After that year she left school to start working so the couple could get married and raise their family. But she was convinced Calvin had something she needed, and she wanted to go back. So, 14 years after she first began, with three small kids at home, she committed to finishing her degree. “I was so short on study time that I kept a book propped up in my car when I drove, so if I hit a red light, I could read another paragraph.”
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