Alumni Profiles
Letters to Bill
Still racing for a cure
Sharing the Gospel in unique ways
Searching: The journey of composer Becky Archibald
Letters to Bill
By Randy Dillinger
Bill Vetter ’56 spent the last eight months of his life battling leukemia. But not even death could stifle his joy in life. Nor could a two-and-a-half-hour funeral exhaust all the stories of lives that had been changed through him.
Joyce (Hoke) Vetter ’56, Bill’s wife, and their daughter Cheryl Opper leaf through a scrapbook several inches thick, full of the letters and cards sent to Bill’s family over the last year and a half. They seem like best friends revisiting favorite memories that invoke laughter and tears, and through it all, a sense of pride that they had the privilege of belonging to Bill’s family.
The stories they share give witness to Bill’s love for people. All kinds of people. The cashier in the grocery store. The medical professional who administered his treatments. A young person who needed a friend. Wherever he went, he brought joy and laughter to those around him.
“There are some people who evoke happiness and joy in other people just by their presence. Bill was one of those [people],” says Derrick Filkins BA ’78, a longtime friend of the Vetter family.
His wife, Carol (Neff) Filkins BA ’80, adds, “He had a way of bringing out the best in people, even in trying circumstances.”
Even in the waning hours of his earthly life.
Bill received his last blood transfusion the Thursday before he died. Joyce recalls that the doctor came in and said, “This will be the last one. There’s nothing more we can do.” And in his humor, Bill said, “I was just telling Joyce last night how hard it is staying alive.” Then he started singing the BeeGees song “Staying Alive.” The doctor just shook his head and laughed.
The doctor later told Cheryl that it was her father’s spirit and will to live that kept him alive. He said, “He’s been very, very sick for a long time, and your father will decide when it’s time to go home to God.”
That time came on the night of Oct. 5, 1999, while Bill was sleeping.
Losing her husband and best friend of more than 43 years devastated Joyce. She wrote of the days that followed Bill’s death, “My children returned to their families and I began my life without Bill. Going through the grief process and living without my best friend, the love of my life. The pain is real and deep. Some days I find it hard to move, to think, to breathe.”
At the time of Bill’s death, Joyce felt strongly that she should give his wedding ring to the man who, as a teenager, had lived with their family for some time. He had since become a jeweler. She never dreamed that she might see that ring again; but last Christmas, he dropped by for a visit and gave her a small package that contained the ring. It had been transformed into a necklace, and the ring slightly remolded to form the shape of a heart.
Cheryl says, “I heard mom crying and crying, and I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And before she said anything, I knew it was the ring. And I said, ‘That’s exactly where it belongs … next to your heart.’”
The loss of Bill’s presence was felt strongly by his associates at Warner Press, where he worked for more than 40 years, starting as a pressroom apprentice and finally retiring as a salesman for the company. He and Joyce attended Park Place Church of God throughout their married life. Bill served as a youth Sunday school teacher for many years.
Bill was well-known in the local community. He made audiences laugh during appearances at the Paramount Theatre and at the “Wake Up, Anderson” breakfasts. And he faithfully visited the Pendleton Correctional Facility Friday after Friday for 17 years, even while undergoing treatments for leukemia.
“I’ve always admired him,” Cheryl says. “He really is my knight in shining armor. The whole experience with his cancer really re-emphasized that he’s more incredible than I even imagined he was before. And nothing—not the drugs, the treatment, the illness—nothing ever changed him. He was still himself all the way to the end.”
Cheryl says she continues to sense her father’s influence. “I feel Dad’s spirit encouraging me to do things and to reach out and take risks and challenge myself in new ways.”
Shortly before Cheryl returned to Indiana in the weeks before her father’s death, she decided to start working in youth ministry at her church in Massachusetts. She says Bill was so excited when she came home and told him. “The last thing my father gave to me before he died was a youth Bible,” says Cheryl. “At my first youth meeting, I read his inscription to the youth and told them why I was taking this on, and that I hoped I would be able to give them a small part of what my father gave the youth at Park Place.”
Still racing for a cure
Randy Dillinger
Carol (Neff) BA ’80 and Derrick Filkins BA ’78 are no strangers to marathons. They have competed in several marathons in places as adventurous as the race itself—Alaska, Bermuda and, come December 2000, Hawaii.
To run a marathon requires a religious devotion to discipline. The Filkinses have mastered that. As dedicated as they are to their training, so too are they tireless in their fundraising efforts for victims of blood-related cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma.
Over the years, the Filkinses have received an outpouring of financial support and encouragement from fellow AU alumni. Among these supporters, none ever left a mark as indelibly as Bill and Joyce Vetter.
The Filkinses and Vetters became acquainted through their association at Warner Press, where Carol, Joyce and Bill worked. When Carol and Derrick began to raise money in support of the Leukemia Society’s efforts toward finding a cure for the disease, the Vetters became generous and enthusiastic supporters of the cause.
The two families formed a bond of fellowship that became inextricably linked when Bill was diagnosed with the very disease Carol and Derrick were racing to cure. Bill’s race ended short of a cure.
When Carol and Derrick race in Bill’s honor and memory this December, it will not be the first time they have carried the banner of someone within the AU community. In January 1996 they raced in the Bermuda International Marathon in honor of Adam Fox, the then 9-year-old son of Julie (Deemer) Fox AS ’84 and AU business professor Dr. Jerry Fox BA ’79. Adam responded well to chemotherapy treatments and has been in remission ever since.
The Honolulu race will be even more significant for the Filkins and Vetter families, as Joyce Vetter and her three children—Cheryl, Dennis and Cathy—are all planning to travel to Honolulu for the event.
The trip is significant, too, as Bill and Joyce celebrated their 25th and 40th wedding anniversaries in Hawaii.
Sharing the gospel in unique ways
Christy (Newsom) Allen BA '89
Walk into San Diego’s Highland Ranch Elementary School on a Sunday morning and you are handed a cup of gourmet coffee to enjoy as you relax to the tunes of a soft jazz combo. A glance around the room reveals people in versions of the suburban uniform: khakis and T-shirts, jeans and tennis shoes. The speaker, who eagerly climbs the cafeteria stage to talk about marriage, is wearing a leather bomber jacket.
This is church Harry Kuehl-style.
“God calls all of us to different audiences,” Harry Kuehl MDiv ’82 explains. “We have a philosophy of ministry that’s very different from any church.”
It may be innovative, but The Church at Carmel Mountain, Kuehl’s pastorate since 1992, has hit on a formula that works for its upper-middle-class community. Beginning with a home Bible study that attracted 22, the congregation grew almost overnight. Just months after its inception, the church was topping 300. For several years, the congregation has reached a regular weekly attendance of 1,500 to 1,600.
But don’t ask Kuehl to take the credit. “I’m just the guy on the playing field with the loudest voice,” he says. “This is not my church. There is a team of incredibly gifted people who carry this vision of bringing people to Christ.”
Kuehl didn’t always have that vision. Not raised in church, he was a “strong partier” who served a short stint in jail. But as a pre-law junior at Portland State University, he says he “felt an impending change” coming into his life as he read St. Augustine’s Confessions.
“I had been plagued by the intellectual questions of life like ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why am I here?’” he explains. “I found myself identifying with St. Augustine, who was restless and an attorney. Then, as I read on, I discovered that he surrendered his life to Christ, where he finally found peace. I realized that this man whom I had grown to love loved God, so I began to investigate God.”
After becoming a Christian, he says he turned into “a lunatic for Jesus,” nearly driving away his wife, Candace, who was not a Christian. He followed his pastor’s advice to back off and allow her to accept Christ in her own time, which she did a few months later.
This subtle approach, a cornerstone of Kuehl’s ministry, is not always appreciated by other Christians. For example, as an Anderson seminary student in the early ’80s, Kuehl started a coffee and doughnuts outreach to factory workers standing in the unemployment lines.
“Some people wanted me to stuff their hands with Christian tracts and literature,” he says, “but I just wanted to meet them. I let the invitation [to talk about Christianity] come from them. Purity of motive is important.”
As a pastor, Kuehl’s relational ministry method sets apart his church from others in the area. “We have a refuge for people who don’t want to hear about the Jebusites and the Girgashites on Sunday morning,” he says. “Maybe their marriage is falling apart and they want to hear what God has to say about that instead.
“Jesus catered to the unconvinced and that’s what we do by packaging [the gospel] in a way that gets people’s attention. We don’t dilute the message; it’s very often about sin. But we don’t do just worship either, although that is biblically valid and there are plenty of churches within a mile of us who do that very well.”
What does Kuehl say to his detractors, who disparage the church’s performance-based services? “Entertainment means holding a person’s attention for a moment. In our case, we want to hold their attention long enough to hear the Good News.”
Searching: The Journey of Composer Becky Archibald
Randy Dillinger
High above the intersection of Illinois and Washington streets in downtown Indianapolis, Becky (Hart) Archibald BA ’83 takes her seat at the piano. Crowds of shoppers stream by, while a few pause to watch the drama of this artist at work.
With a tape player rolling, Archibald begins to converse musically with her audience at Circle Centre Mall’s Artsgarden. She plays what she feels and sees around her, from the sound of high heels walking across the floor to the visual circular patterns of the mall’s design. For Archibald, this is a rare opportunity to compose somewhere other than her living room.
“When I talked to the Artsgarden people, I posed the fact that a poet or a writer can take a pad and pencil and go to a beautiful place and write. But I can’t take a piano anywhere,” Archibald says. “I wondered if I would get new ideas writing in a different place.” From this unique experience, Archibald wrote eight short pieces, each a different story.
Archibald has certainly arrived on the music scene. Not only has she just completed the “composer-in-residence” project at the Artsgarden, she released her first CD, Searching, last year. It is a nominee for “Best Album” by Just Plain Folks, a national organization for independent musicians.
Archibald remembers her experience at AU as “a really happy time for me. But I was a little lost about what to do.” Her future brother-in-law, the Rev. Dana Hofstrom BA ’82, “sat me down one day and said, ‘We’re going to come up with a major for you.’ I think we just closed our eyes and pointed,” Archibald recalls.
Archibald tried computer science first. Six months later, they picked again—accounting. She graduated with degrees in music and business. She moved to California and began work in bookkeeping and accounting, gaining the confidence and skills she would need to operate her own music studio. She also earned her master’s degree in piano at California State University at Long Beach.
In 1990, Archibald moved back to Indiana. She taught privately and became an adjunct professor at the University of Indianapolis. In the summer of 1997, she decided to leave the university to devote her time to composing. Her husband, Alan Archibald BA ’83, motivated her to play at an Indianapolis coffeehouse, despite its poorly tuned piano. And her brother, John Hart, encouraged her to pursue recording.
“I spent about eight months finishing what became the title track on the CD,” Archibald says. “When my brother heard the piece, he first asked for a tape of it, then suggested I make a CD.”
Soon, she found herself in the studio with fellow AU alumni Darrell Powell ’77 and Mark Pay BA ’83. The pieces reflect Archibald’s composition style—fresh, creative and spontaneous. And she wanted the recording itself to reflect the same. “I wanted that kind of intimate, living room kind of sound,” she says. Archibald still teaches piano to students out of her home studio. Her method includes teaching students to play by sight and by ear and to compose their own work. In 1997, she created a book of her students’ compositions called Kids Compose.
Archibald isn’t shy about letting people know her hopes for the future. “I want to play in Carnegie Hall on or before my 40th birthday, which is in 2002,” she says.
Until then, Searching is available at stores, including Family Christian Stores in Anderson, and her Web site at beckyarchi.iuma.com. She can be reached by e-mail at becky-archi@aol.com.
