Hope College - Milestone Yearbook (Holland, MI)

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HOPE COLLEGE M E JOHN BERNARD NYKERK (1861-1936) On October 25, 1936, Dr. John B. Nykerk passed quietly from the scene of his labors. His death came as a distinct shock to the faculty, students, and friends of Hope College. The names of Hope College and Dr. Nykerk have been asso- ciated almost as one for more than fifty years. Dr. Nykerk was born at Overisel, Michigan, on September 13, 1861. When he had completed his elementary education, he entered the Academy of Hope College, and graduated from there in 1880. After teaching for a short period in the township schools he returned to Hope College and was graduated as the valedictorian of the Class of 1885. In September of the same year he was appointed instructor in the Academy, later organized as the College High School. In 1895 he was chosen Professor of English Language and Literature at the college. He became Hope's Dean of Men in 1918. After eighteen years of service in this capacity, in April, 1936, he resigned as Dean and as head of the Department of English. However, the Board of Trustees of Hope Col- lege at once appointed him Emeritus Professor of English. This long period of service was interrupted only twice during 1890-91 —when he was engaged as a teacher of English at the Northwestern Classical Acad- emy, and again when he spent a year and a half at Oxford University, Eng- land, in graduate study of Early English and Anglo-Saxon literature. Dr. Nykerk was a musician of the highest order. As a baritone singer he ranked among the first musicians of Michigan, doing concert and choral work not only throughout the state, but also at Chautauqua and Institute Assem- blies throughout the east and west. He was director of music at Hope Col- lege, conducting glee clubs, the Choral Union, and other similar organizations until recent years. He organized and directed the Hope College Lyceum in the late nineties and continued to bring artists and speakers of fame to the school until the outbreak of the World War. Among the most outstanding American orators whom Dr. Nykerk knew personally and engaged for his lec- ture programs were William Jennings Bryan, Robert La Follette, Sr., Newell Dwight Hillis, Russell H. Conwell, and Senator A. H. Beveridge. In all of his activities in the Lyceum he sought to augment his work as a teacher of music and oratory. He had to his credit a larger number of prize- winning student orators than any other instructor in the Michigan Oratorical League. In recognition of the prominent position which he had attained in these pursuits, Hope College conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Let- ters upon him in 1920. At the time of his death Dr. Nykerk was a member of the Holland Rotary Club, the National Educational Association, the Michigan Educational Association, and the Author's Association of Michigan. He was also a writer of the Oxford Dictionary group and had submitted to the editors at London a division on Old Dutch, or Frisian, and Anglo-Saxon—a part of the never-finished section for which he was responsible, and on which he was considered an authority.