Dorothy Weaver (Babs) Van Vleck

We are gathered this afternoon to bear witness to our faith in the resurrection, the resurrection of all who are buried in Jesus Christ the Lord and the resurrection of Dorothy Weaver Van Vleck.  Babs died this last Friday evening.  She was 82.

            Dorothy Weaver was born in 1924 in Weehawken, NJ, across from NY City, the younger of two daughters.  Her lifelong nickname of “Babs” apparently was a corruption of “baby”, which is what her father called her.  Anyway, the name stuck.

            During her later childhood, the Weaver family moved from NJ to the Hudson River Valley to the town of Beacon.  There Babs graduated from high school in 1941, and established a number of life-long friends.  It was also in Beacon she noticed a young man, a new employee at the Beacon lab, walking by her house, suitcase in hand, to his boarding house.  She saw him again at Christian Endeavor at her Presbyterian Church. The young man, of course turned out to be Bob VanVleck.  Bob and Babs married in November 1943, and shared 58 years together, and four children.  Bob died in 2002.

            The newlyweds didn’t stay long in Beacon, as Bob entered the US Army Air Corps, serving as a weatherman.  Babs followed Bob to their first sojourn in Richmond, when Bob was stationed out at Byrd Field.  Following the war Bob returned to his job with the Beacon Lab, and Bob and Babs moved to Fishkill, where they lived until coming to Richmond in 1963.  Here they threw themselves into the life of Bon Air Presbyterian and the life of the community. Including the turbulent social changes of the late 1960’s and 1970’s.  Bob served a term on the Richmond School Board, and Babs and Bob worked and invested their children in the effort to make school desegregation in Richmond a successful reality.

            In 1976, Texaco closed its operations here in Richmond, and the VanVlecks returned to NY, where Bob worked until his retirement.  In 1988 Babs and Bob returned to Richmond for their third and final stay in Richmond.

            You often hear of someone who was a “diamond in the rough”.  Babs was more of a multi-faceted jewel.  A product of her era, Babs was completely devoted to hearth and home.  She ran their family while Bob went to work early, came home late and left quickly, out to save the world.  She enjoyed the nurture of her children, with the attendant Cub Scout dens and Girl Scout troops and church school classes.  But perhaps most of all, she treasured relationships – family, friends, church, community, world.

            In 1950, through Church World Service, her family hosted the Viksne family, forming a relationship that has endured over the generations for over 50 years.  Then in 1961, the family hosted for the school year Hans Strasser of Germany, an AFS foreign exchange student, who became part of the extended, adoptive VanVleck family.

            Babs lived by the old adage, “make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.  She treasured the life-long relationships she made and kept with high school friends and the sisters of the PEO organization.  And she made new friends wherever she lived. She intuitively and naturally looked for, and found relationships on which she could build.  Including relationships with pets and animals and birds.

            Out of her Christian faith, Babs was very much committed to working for peace and justice, and especially racial reconciliation.  She acted on that commitment personally by serving as a tutor and volunteer in the public schools, and through her church’s witness and social ministry. She also lived that commitment through a supportive relationship with the Southern Poverty Law center. 

            Babs formed symbolic kinds of relationships through her extensive reading.  She often would read four books a week.  And not dime store novels, either.  Usually serious, challenging books.  And of course, she read books in relationship with others, in book clubs and book groups, in addition to books she read alone.

            Babs also understood that relationships extend beyond one’s immediate family and across generational lines, enduring even when not convenient.  She welcomed into her home her dementia-stricken father in law for the last 5 years of his life, and then her mother for another six.

            Babs was frugal and generous. Both characteristics were expressions of her compassion.  Babs was frugal in the sense of “waste not, want not”, but also frugal out of environmental sensitivity and Christian stewardship:  being a good Calvinist, she believed you used something or wore your clothing till you wore it out.  But while frugal with regard to her own comforts, to others, Babs was generous.  It was a joy to her in her later years to be able to give and to share with those persons and causes for which she deeply cared.

            After spending her entire adult life at home and volunteering in the community, in 1978 Babs combined her love of her community and its history with her love for people when she became a docent at Boscobel Restoration in Garrison, NY. She worked there for ten years.

            While Babs was a faithful member of various churches over the years, it was in her relationship with this congregation that Babs found a lasting church home.  She was active in most every dimension of our congregational life and ministry.  She called on prospective members and visited the sick and infirm.  She was active in Presbyterian Women, serving as President and circle leader.  She washed dishes on a clean up team on Wednesday nights and polished the offering plates on Monday morning.  After counting the money that went in those plates.  Even in her “mature years”, Babs found creative ways of serving her God and her church.

            Babs was predeceased by her sister Gladys, her husband Bob, and a grandson, Andrew VanVleck; she is survived by four children, Robert H. Van Vleck, Elizabeth Van Vleck, Barbara Jacocks, and William Van Vleck; eight grandchildren: David Hayne, Jonathan Hayne, and Sarah Hayne; Peter Van Vleck and Jesse Van Vleck; J. Caitlin Jacocks and Laura Jacocks; and Jack Van Vleck; one nephew, Roger Kintzel; and her "adopted" sons, Dr. Hans Strasser of Calw, Germany and Janis Viksne of Alexandria, Va; and by huge circle of friends near and far.

            Having gathered for our mutual support and to hear the witness of the Scriptures, let us worship God:

R. Charles Grant

Bon Air Presbyterian Church

Richmond, VA

September 9, 2006