Eppink, Wilemina, 1904-2004

EPPINK

Posted By: Lydia Lucas - Volunteer (email)
Date: 8/19/2010 at 21:26:19

WILEMINA EPPINK, 99, of Sioux Center, Iowa died Saturday afternoon, 8/21, at the Sioux Center Community Hospital.

Funeral services will be held Wednesday, 8/25, in the Sanctuary of First Reformed Church with Rev. Roger Voskuil officiating. Interment will follow in Memory Gardens Cemetery of Sioux Center. Visitation was held Tuesday, 8/24, with the family from 2pm to 8pm at the Memorial Funeral Home of Sioux Center. In lieu of flowers the family requests contributions towards the establishment of a garden in Wilemina's memory.

Wilemina was born on December 31, 1904 on a farm near Boyden, the oldest of seven children. She grew up one mile west of Sioux Center and was both one of the first students from [a] farming family to graduate from the community high school and among the first women from Sioux Center to attend college. Between high school and college, she taught at the country school where some of her younger siblings were students. After graduating from Central College in 1928, she taught at Northwestern Academy for one year.

Then family responsibilities beckoned and she spent the Depression and most of the rest of her life keeping a strong home center from which family members went off to school, to war, to careers, to adventures, and to which several came home to die. She was also an ardent supporter of numerous programs in the community from the Hospital Board and the Hospital Auxiliary to the Combined Appeal and the Women's Club. In 1983 she was honored by the community as the December volunteer of the month.

Her volunteer efforts were perhaps most visible in the more than quarter century during which she was superintendent of the primary Sunday School at her church and coordinator of the community Vacation Bible School, roles in which she had a profound effect on the lives of hundreds of children. Her love of children and family was manifest in the kindergarten graduation parties she held for over 50 years for all the graduates who were even distantly related to her or lived in her neighborhood.

Finally, her home was a haven for family and friends, particularly many of her 36 cousins (the Beyers, the Bootes, and the Doornicks) and the members of the Priscilla Circle, who loved to stop by for coffee and enjoyed looking at her roses. Because of her love for flowers, the family plans to establish a memorial garden in her honor.

She is survived by a sister, Lydia Mol of Zeeland, Michigan; a brother, Herman Eppink, of Danville, Illinois, by five nieces and nephews, 10 grand nieces and nephews, and five great grand nieces and nephews. She is preceded in death by three sisters and one brother.

Source: Siouxland Press (Orange City), Aug. 25, 2004.
The obituary includes a photograph.

A similar obituary was published in the Sioux Center News (Aug. 25, 2004).