Marcella M. Poppen 1924 - 2009

POPPEN, VANDER SCHAAF

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 11/24/2020 at 21:10:54

Sioux City Journal
27 May 2009

Marcella M. Poppen

ORANGE CITY, Iowa (Died Sioux City) -Marcella M. Poppen, 84, of Orange City passed away Friday, May 22, 2009, at a Sioux City hospital.

Services will be 11:30 a.m. Thursday at American Reformed Church in Orange City, with the Rev. Keith Krebs officiating. Graveside services will be 1:30 p.m. Thursday in Memory Gardens Cemetery, Sioux Center, Iowa. Visitation will be after 4 p.m. today at Oolman Funeral Home in Orange City. Visitation with the family will be 10 to 11:15 a.m. Thursday at the church.

Marcella was born in 1924, the second daughter of John A. and Dora (Vander Schaaf) Poppen. She grew up on a farm near Sioux Center. She attended one-room schools in Welcome Township and graduated as valedictorian from Sioux Center High School.

Her career of more than 60 years in music education and church music began with graduation from Morningside College in Sioux City, where she received a bachelor's degree in music education. She earned a master's degree in music education from the Eastman School of Music, another master's degree focused on church music and organ from the University of Oregon and a doctorate in music education from Indiana University School of Music. She also studied at Teacher's College, Columbia University, New York University and the Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music.

She had been a music teacher in Cleghorn, Iowa and Sioux Center's high schools, when she was appointed by the Reformed Church in America's Board of World Mission to serve for four years at the Baiko Jo Gakuin junior and senior high schools in Shiminoseki, Japan. This was followed by 14 years as music supervisor for the Malverne, Long Island public schools. During this time, she received certification by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as an associate in ministry, after which she combined her vocation as a church organist and choir master with secular education positions. She also taught at the State University of New York in Brockport, Simpson College in Indianola and North Central College in Minneapolis.

Her part-time church music position included St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Valley Stream, N.Y., First Lutheran in White Bear Lake, Minn., Christ Episcopal in Westbury, Minn., and St. James on the Parkway Episcopal and Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran in Minneapolis. She then accepted a full-time church music position at the Bellevue Reformed Church in Schenectady, N.Y. A generous legacy to the Abiding Peace Lutheran Church in Budd Lake, N.J. made possible several years of full-time service there. When that was expended, she accepted a similar position at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Bloomsburg, Pa., from which she retired to live in Orange City. There she served as one of the organists at American Reformed Church and continued her life's work and passion for music education through providing Kinder-music classes for young children. During the last 16 years of her life, she also provided private piano lessons.

She is survived by two sisters, Dorothy Bomgaars of Orange City and Charlotte Peterman of Basking Ridge, N.J.; a brother, Alvin of Fayetteville, Pa.; and eight nieces and nephews.

Memorial gifts may be made to the Lutheran Summer Music Scholarship Fund, 122 W. Franklin Ave., Ste. 230, Minneapolis, MN. 55404.