A graceful goodbye for Gerry Kuiper

by Meg Jenista, Contributing Editor

Geraldine Kuiper receiving an honorary Doctorate in Phenomenology upon her retirement at a luncheon on February 2nd.

Gerry Kuiper is a familiar face to each seminary student, faculty or staff member. She is the last calm, serene face you encounter before taking a deep breath to walk down the gauntlet of professorial offices. She is the unflappable presence making last-minute photocopies for absent-minded teachers, doling out the odd exam to a student who needs an accommodation, and exchanging money for yet another packet of class notes as an impatient hoard lines up outside her door. She is the quiet woman who sits in the window, overlooking the lake, knitting yet another pair of socks.

With a tenure of 20-plus years, she is an institution at the CTS institution. But on Friday, Kuiper retired from CTS and set out to, in her own words, “learn a new life outside Calvin Theological Seminary.”

To hear her tell it, this lifetime may be filled with the energy and activity of several.

“My husband worries that I won’t be able to ghet it all in before I’m old and decrepit,” she said.

She already has two trips to Europe planned, one to visit her husband’s family in the Netherlands in April. She’ll be celebrating her sister-in-law’s seventieth birthday and experiencing the real Tulip Time in Keukenhof, The Netherlands, for the first time. In August, she and her husband will go on an extended trip through Europe, just as they did many years ago for their honeymoon. Kuiper said that she and her husband are eager to ride the cable cars up mountains in the Swiss Alps, glorying in vistas foreign to the view outside her office window.

But Kuiper’s plans aren’t only of the jet-setting variety. Straight off from her retirement, Kuiper will travel to Wisconsin to play indulgent grandmother to her three granddaughters, ages 3, 2, and 1. Without the pressure of seeing the Calvin Theological Journal through to publication, Kuiper will have significantly more time to spend with all of her fifteen grandchildren. Her condo is nearby to trails and wooded areas in which she can continue to bike, walk and track wildlife with her grandkids. Her home is ready to become crafting central.

When asked about how much knitting she’d gotten done on the job, she corrected me.

“For Christmas one year, on my breaks, I knit scarves and mittens for each of my grandkids,” she said.

Considering her productivity during breaks, who knows how much knitting, counted-cross-stitch and scrapbooking will be accomplished by her newly retired, yet still nimble fingers.

Kuiper has been a virtual welcome wagon at Calvin Seminary to many students, as well as faculty and staff, most of whom settled into this institution long after Kuiper first made it her occupational home.

“I’ve basically been a welcome wagon for most of the professors,” she said. “I watched them all get settled in.”

As CTS looks forward to welcoming a new face in the old office, many will still feel a sense of loss. Kuiper brought a serenity and calm that exuded through her job and out into the hallways of the seminary and into the frazzled and rushed lives of its citizens.

Want to respond to this article? Send your letter to letters@kerux.org; see the guidelines for more information.