March 2 Today in OPC History

On March 2, 1967, Miss Antoinette Dirkse was honored at an open house for her quarter century of service at Calvary OPC, Cedar Grove, Wisconsin. Former Calvary pastor Robert Churchill penned the following tribute for Miss Dirkse for the occasion:

Getting to know some people is like receiving a Christmas gift which you keep on unwrapping through the years. I remember the pleasure when we first came to the Cedar Grove Church and discovered a church organist and choir director who was not only a fine musician, but also one who understood almost instinctively the requirements of a Calvinistic ministry and what would undergird it and give it wings. It was not long before I discovered that through her teaching Antoinette Dirkse had changed the cultural climate for a large part of a generation of young people. Perhaps there were no Biggs or Van Cliburns created, but into many a youth there came a sensitivity, expansiveness and beauty which could never have been there otherwise. The most original artist is the one who walks with the great artists and masters of the past. Thus it was that Miss Dirkse brought to a small farming community the works of Bach, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Handel, Mozart, Stainer, Haydn - a whole galaxy - as well as a touch of the modern composers. So to our beloved homes and churches was brought that wealth of great spirits which cannot be exchanged in the coin of any realm. We learned to appreciate the dependability, the faithfulness of Miss Dirkse; and about this we could write much. But there was always about her work that something extra, a quality beyond the ordinary. It may have been a prelude, a choir number, an offertory; but how often it was something more than this. For there comes a time when we feel our lives washed by a light from beyond the hills - a kind of timeless breakthrough when a Glory enflames all the chords of being. "For we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us" II Corinthians 4:7.

Picture: Calvary OPC, Cedar Grove, Wisconsin