I can say with great certainty that the years I attended Watson Groen Christian School prepared me to spend 25 years of my life in Federal Prison. This statement might need some explanation.
Our family immigrated from the Netherlands to the United States in November of 1959 and settled in the Seattle area. The four and a half years at Watson Groen and at First CRC were spiritually very formative in my life. For a number of years my world was rather small, six blocks from home to school. We lived on 31st NE with the same street number as the Christian Reformed Church on 25th NE. I worked part time at an IGA grocery store in Kenmore, WA. Even though my English was initially very limited, I immediately felt at home. During one recess, however, I was asked if I'd like to play football. Now that I could do, until they came out with a ball tapered on two ends and not a round one as I had expected. In addition, the ball was almost never kicked during the games we played. But I made that adjustment and many more during the years at Watson Groen.
The school went through some difficult times. In the tenth grade we had just 24 students in the whole high school. Gratefully, that increased to about 42 my senior year. The high school met in the church basement where every Monday morning we would put up the partitions, move desks and chairs in place and put them away on Friday afternoons so the church could be used for services on the weekends. During the early part of my senior year, the four classrooms on the hill were completed and the high school moved.
Upon graduation I attended Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI. I served a church in Eastern Ontario for four years. The church experience was very rewarding. After that I went back to school for several years and was hired by the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a chaplain in 1978 at Milan, MI. We transferred to Sheridan, OR in 1989, to Florence, CO in 1992, and I was the Assistant Chaplaincy Administrator in Washington, DC from 1999 until my retirement in 2003. My wife Debbie and I then moved to Sparta, Georgia, on Lake Sinclair where we have lived the last thirteen years.
Reflecting on my career with the Bureau of Prisons, my world expanded significantly from that small six-block area of my high school years. I began to work with inmates of many different faith traditions. While at Florence, for example, I worked with 19 different faith groups accommodating and providing for their religious needs. Without the solid foundation I received at Watson Groen and First Church I would not have been able to make such accommodations without jeopardizing my own faith journey. Instead my life of faith was greatly enhanced in this process.
I have had a number of part-time jobs in my retirement years, taught different religion courses at a local college, worked as a Restorative Justice Program developer and am currently preaching several times a month in area Presbyterian congregations. I also lead a Bible study as a volunteer in a local prison.
Debbie and I have four children and six grand children, two of whom will be graduating from high school this summer. I thoroughly enjoy kayaking on the lake and local rivers and I fish for whatever species will take the lures I toss in the water. I was able to attend the 50th anniversary of the school's existence and enjoyed meeting several class mates again. None of us had aged a bit since I saw them last J! It is hard to believe that a few weeks ago I turned 70 and that the rest of my class mates will join me!
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