Still Working
At age 85, Jeanette (Rozeboom ’39) Van Voorst realized retirement wasn’t for her.
She had been a stay-at-home mom for her eight children until her husband’s health required them to move off their farm near Sioux Center when she was 48. She worked at the Orange City hospital for 38 years, first as a nurse’s aide and then as a surgical technician.
A year after retiring, however, Van Voorst felt lost. “I wanted to keep busy. You go backwards fast if you just sit around,” she says.
So Van Voorst returned to the surgery area at Orange City Area Health System (OCAHS) four years ago, this time as a volunteer receptionist. She works at least one day a week providing comfort and insider knowledge for patients and their families.
“She understands the anxiety people go through when a loved one has a surgery,” says Mary Plathe, the health system’s volunteer services manager. “She soothes those fears and keeps them very calm and informed.”
Van Voorst, who will be honored in October at the Iowa Hospital Association’s meeting in Des Moines as a recipient of a Shining Star Award from OCAHS, plans to keep volunteering as long as she can.
After all, she’s only 90.
Full Circle
Shedding tears over the eldest leaving the nest: It’s a common parental reaction. But when Mick Noteboom’s daughter Adrianna decided to attend NWC, her father’s emotions had as much to do with the past as with the future.
“Northwestern changed my life,” says Noteboom, who graduated in 1983 and is now a National Alumni Board member from Champaign, Ill. “My daughter is a lot like me, and I knew she’d have that same deep-down experience I had.”
As a freshman from Milford, Iowa, Noteboom brought a substance abuse problem to campus. “I didn’t have the best experience growing up,” he says. “I was picked on a lot, never had many friends, and my parents divorced. I drank a lot and smoked a lot of pot. That was my escape.”
A fellow student challenged Noteboom to accept Christ and change his lifestyle. The moment profoundly changed Noteboom; his faith would continue to grow thanks to Jackie (Woudstra ’75) De Groot, Char Ten Clay ’79, Cliff Leslie and Dr. Kimberly Utke Svanoe—staff and faculty members who influenced him in ways that “you don’t know what hit you until later.”
Though Adrianna’s faith journey has always been strong, her father knew blessings were in store. Seeing her at Homecoming, he thought, “This is everything I could have hoped and prayed for, and then some.”
Strongman
When he flexes, Jona Leo’s bicep is nearly two feet around. Twenty-one inches, to be exact. The 1999 alum and U.S. champion powerlifter can bench press nearly 700 pounds. That’s like lifting three Raider football players at once.
Interested in strength training through high school and college, Leo started powerlifting in 2002. “My competitive spirit wasn’t done,” he says. Now, in addition to being a husband, father and wellness director at a retirement community in Sioux Falls, he also trains and travels to meets throughout the Midwest.
A strength sport, powerlifting resembles weightlifting but focuses on different lifts: the squat, bench press and deadlift.
A win at last August’s national meet entitled Leo to one of eight spots on the U.S. team competing at the International Powerlifting Federation’s Bench Worlds competition in Solden, Austria, in May. Leo lifted 655 pounds, 677 and 683. His last lift would have been enough for a silver medal if he hadn’t been called on a technicality; he finished in fifth place.
Leo is heading back to the U.S. competition in Orlando over Labor Day weekend and hoping for another trip to the worlds next spring. This time he’s aiming for three clean lifts and besting his personal record of 705 pounds.
Fields of Opportunity
What makes one child follow in her parents’ footsteps and another choose a totally different path?
Teresa (Rummel ’01) Van Oosterhout studied this question as it pertains to migrant families for her doctoral dissertation in sociology from Michigan State University. Specifically, she wondered, what motivates some to go to college while others continue doing farm work?
“The main thing is parental influence,” Van Oosterhout says. “If parents are encouraging kids to continue their education, that tends to be what they will do.”
Strong connections outside the close-knit migrant community also matter—a teacher, coach or counselor, or friends already in college.
Van Oosterhout’s research was a chance to deepen relationships she had begun building as coordinator of a mentoring program for migrant kids in west Michigan, which has a large population of Hispanic workers for the region’s fruit farms.
“The majority in this area are U.S. citizens and legal residents who are working hard to support their families,” says Van Oosterhout, who now writes grant proposals for the Lakeshore Ethnic Diversity Alliance. “They’re some of the most dedicated workers I’ve been around.”
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