Kempers, Bert 1902-1992

KEMPERS, HENEVELD, ROZEBOOM

Posted By: Paul Van Dyke-Volunteer
Date: 2/25/2015 at 22:10:06

Source: Sioux Center News (11-4-1992)

Born: March 5, 1902
Died: October 25, 1992

Bert Kempers, 90, died Sunday, October 25, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Services were at 4 P.M. Thursday, October 29, at the First Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque.

Kempers was born March 5, 1902, in Sioux Center, the son of John and Annie Rozeboom Kempers. He graduated from the Academy of Orange City and from Hope College in Holland, Michigan in 1924. He graduated from the Northwestern Medical School in Chicago, Illinois, in 1928. He married Harriet Lucile Heneveld June 14, 1928. He served his internship at Methodist Hospital in Des Moines. He was a medical missionary with the Reformed Church of America and the Presbyterian Church in Mexico to the Latino American Hospital in Pueblo, Mexico, and Chiapas, Mexico, and then to the American Hospital in Guatemala City from 1929 to 1931.

He was a doctor and surgeon with the Indian Service Pine Ridge and Rosebud Lakota Sioux, South Dakota, and Hoopa, California. He was a chief at the Indian Hospital in Albuquerque for six years. He started his private medical practice in Albuquerque in 1941. From 1942 to 1946 he served as a Major/lieutenant colonel in the Army Air Corps in the 185th General Hospital. He returned to his surgical private practice in 1947. He retired in Albuquerque in 1972.

He was a founder of Medical Arts Square in Albuquerque and a member of the American College of Surgeons, the Bernalillo County Medical Association, a 57 year member and elder of the First Presbyterian Church, and chief of surgery at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque.

Survivors include his wife, Lucile; two sons, Bert Allen Kempers and wife Jeanne of Boulder City, Colorado, and Dr. Glenn Kempers and wife Cindy of Grand Junction, Colorado; two daughters, Lucile A. Housley of Princeton, Oregon, and Jeanne Timmons and husband Mark of Salem, Oregon; three brothers, the Reverend John and Mable Kempers of Seal Beach, California, Bernard Kempers and wife Marjorie of Silver Springs, Maryland, and Marion Kempers and wife Geneva of Hull; two sisters, Min Mouw of Willmar, Minnesota, and Lillian Warntjes of Sioux Center; 22 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren