We have no school this coming Monday. Does anyone remember why? [various students replied: "It's Memorial Day."] Yes. When I was a kid, my grandparents called Memorial Day “Decoration Day” because they always went to the cemetery to put flowers at the MEMORIAL STONES of loved ones--especially those of veterans. Whatever else we did on Memorial Day, I remember walking to familiar stones at Lakeside Cemetery in Port Huron, Michigan, and hearing stories of those who made my life possible. Without those great grandparents, my mom would remind us, you literally would not exist. It sometimes made me dizzy to think of generations that way. Still does.
The tradition of MEMORIAL STONES goes back thousands of years, but they were not always associated with graves or cemeteries. There are several examples of MEMORIAL STONES in the Old Testament.
When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ ... then you shall tell them...”
Today we’re going to be talking about Twelve MEMORIAL STONES in the history of CCS. In fact, I hope to put 12 large stones in the gym-side grove between the front two parking lots this summer, and when your children ask in time to come what those stones mean… you can tell them of the things I shared today.
The
1st MEMORIAL STONE would have to be the year
1980 when Calvary Christian
Schools began with only kindergarten, first, and second grades It was down in Muskegon where the new Muskegon Middle School is now being built. Two teachers were hired for that first year: Miss Judy Holman (who taught kindergarten here for more than 25 years) and Mrs. Deb Stenberg (who retired from CCS in 2019).
The
2nd MEMORIAL STONE would be 1991 when CCS had its first Commencement Ceremony for its first graduating class. In that year's yearbook, we found many other people who still work here at CCS. You see, CCS may have begun with only K-2, but the school then added one grade level each year for the next ten years. Calvary kept growing and hiring more teachers. That's why in the 1990-1991 yearbook, you can find: Mrs. Mann (a secretary back then): Mrs. Becky Smith; Mrs. VanTine; Mrs. Booth (in kindergarten); and Mrs. Lockwood and Mrs. McCallum (in 2nd grade).
Side note: Mrs. Lockwood was a senior the very first year I came to CCS. So was a young man named Nick Lockwood. And yes, they were already dating at that time. It would be impossible to place a MEMORIAL STONE for all the couples (and now families) on this planet today who first began dating while attending CCS, but I can think of at least a dozen from the past twenty-five years alone.just think…if Calvary didn’t exist, those couples might not have met and, if not, those family wouldn’t exist. It’s almost the same feeling I used to get when thinking about my family tree.
The 3rd MEMORIAL STONE is 1999. That was the year that CCS moved from the old building in Muskegon to this new building on Kendra Road. No need for a picture because we step into this new building every school day.
The 4th MEMORIAL STONE is Y2K, which stood for the “Year 2000.” 
The 5th MEMORIAL STONE happened on April 20, 2001, and it already has a real memorial stone right outside the front rotunda entrance of the school.
Hundreds of people pass by this memorial every day, but it's possible most do not know what it signifies. It was one of the saddest events in the national news that year, and it all culminated right here in our building.
In the Roni and Charity Bowers Memorial (above), the white dogwood tree represents Roni, the mother, and the pink dogwood represents Charity, the baby. Roni Bowers had been a teacher at CCS a few years before. I first met her in the rotunda just outside the school office. She had Charity in her arms and all the ladies from the office were making a big fuss over her. It was to be their last day in our building before leaving for Peru, where they had been serving as missionaries (living on a houseboat, built by some men at Calvary Church, which moored on the Amazon River). I'm so glad I met the Bowers family that day in the fall.
On April 20, 2001, this Bowers family was flying from one village to another along the Amazon River. The Peruvian Police and American CIA, flying in a US jet, mistook them for a drug smuggling plane and shot them down. Jim and the boy lived.
But Roni and Charity who were sitting in the front of the plane (much like they appear in this picture), both died instantly from a single bullet that went
through both of their hearts.
A few days later the funeral was held at the CCS gymnasium. School was canceled that day because the building was surrounded by news outlets from around the world: CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Time Magazine—everyone was here there were satellite trucks all over the place. It was by far the biggest news event to ever affect this building.
Then less than five months later....
The 6th MEMORIAL STONE happened on September 11, 2001. In fact, the date literally became the historic name of the event. We call it 9-11. I was in my office at school (talking with a missionary to Togo, West Africa, about our first ever international student at CCS) when Dianne Lihan, the receptionist, told us that one of the World Trade Center Towers had been hit by a plane. Not seeing the images, we assumed it was a little New York "tour" plane. A few minutes later, she told us the other tower had just been hit by another plane--and that both planes were commercial airliners. That was when we knew it was a terrorist attack. Then the Pentagon was hit, and another jet was unaccounted for. All this was happening while CCS students were in their classrooms completely unaware. After lunch we called an assembly in the gymnasium for MS and HS only. We notified elementary parents that we did not tell their children of that day's events, but we did show the older students some of the news on the big screens in the gym. We later cancelled the VB and Soccer games for that night. (In fact, all sporting events across the country were later canceled for the rest of the week.) Nine-eleven was a horrible event that changed the rest of that year and years to come for the whole world.
The 7th MEMORIAL STONE is the year 2005, when CCS celebrated its 25th Anniversary. The pictures below hang in the school office. One is from 2005, the other is from 2009. If you want to see younger versions of many people you know, come in and take a closer look. (Or double click on the photo itself.)
The 8th MEMORIAL STONE is the year 2012, when the CCS school board incorporated as a separate “non-profit organization.” Prior to that year, the school had been a ministry of Calvary Church. This school literally exists because of the vision of that congregation, but the church came upon financial difficulties that had begun in the sluggish economy following 9-11. Long story short is that even though the church had paid off SIX MILLION dollars on this campus and building in just twelve years, they were no longer able to pay the mortgage and it went back to 5/3rd Bank. After much negotiating, however, the bank was willing to let CCS, the new independent school, lease the building while they tried to sell it to other interested schools. It was a year of uncertainty as one serious "buyer" in particular, went through the building three times. If they had decided to move their school from Spring Lake to our/campus, CCS would have been displaced to one of the numerous "Plan Bs" we had explored in which to open that fall. I have been asked by various board members through the years to write a short account of how God orchestrated our return to the building we had moved out of for two months.
If I ever do write such a booklet, I might call it "Plan B: The Patient Providence of God."
Why that title? Because the CCS Board and I explored many of Plan Bs that summer, and each one brought a temporary sense of HOPE that we would have a place for school in the fall. Most of them were "top secret," so when people asked me: "Where are we going to have school next year?" I would answer quite earnestly, "Exactly where God wants us to be." I sincerely believed that... even as the doors of several "Plan Bs”after " closed one after the other--and thank God they did.
"O, we of little faith!" We had let go of the hope that Plan A (the building that had been built for CCS in 1998-99) could ever be home to CCS again. The lesson some of us learned that year was this: Though it is wise to have a back-up plan, never rule out God's desire and ability to restore Plan A. This is true of all creation itself. In the beginning, God created Plan A, and at the end of each creative day, He said, "That's good.". Then THE FALL took place and put a series of Plan Bs in place. Even so, God promised that someday He would restore His Plan A. Yet century after century, mankind proves that we are prone to forget Plan A... (As the old hymn says: "Prone to wander...Lord, I feel it....prone to leave the God I love). We're prone to settle for Plan B, and were it not for "the patient providence of God," Plan A would be long-forgotten dream. In a much smaller scale, though it was huge at the time, that's what CCS learned in 2012. That year is a very significant MEMORIAL STONE.
The 9th MEMORIAL STONE is the year 2014 when CCS purchased the building from Fifth/Third Bank. By taking on a new mortgage with a different bank, we were no longer renters living with the thought of losing our building to another school. The purchase price was $3.4 million dollars, and the current balance is down to about $2.2 million. Google Earth was new to me that year and for the first time I was studying our building and campus from satellite images online when I noticed a huge CROSS in our building's design. I called the architect in Grand Rapids who laughed and said, "You guys are just now noticing that Cross. It's called a cruciform design--dates back to the Middle Ages. I started with that 300' cross and add everything else to it."
What a powerful thought: for fifteen years, without ever seeing it, CCS students had been going to school in the shadow of the cross. This discovery happened a few weeks before Easter, and the Muskegon Chronicle did a front page feature about it for the Easter Sunday Edition. Some time later, Scott Meyer built the model showing that cross that has graced our hallway ever since.
Along with the blessing of that year, however, comes a serious reality of stewardship. That mortgage is slightly over $15,000 / month in the school budget. Part of my new job description for the next year or two will be sharing this story with people who see the value of CCS know we could serve families even better if that mortgage were greatly reduced or gone before our 45th Anniversary in the summer of 2025.
The 11th MEMORIAL STONE is the present year, 2023. If all goes as planned, we will be launching an all-day Childcare Center in September. The preschool will remain where it is, but the childcare will be up in the current art room. The art room will be where the current library is, and the library will be disbursed into each of the classrooms by grade-level. Mrs. Anhalt’s room will be in the current copy room. The copy room and business office will be in that new room in the cafeteria. And the teacher’s work room will be down the hall where Mrs. Wilson’s business office is. So This year of 2023 is going to a year of lots of exciting changes. It also happens to be my last year as Head of School—after 23 years—but I will still be here at CCS overseeing the launch of the childcare (pending final approval) and helping with the financial sustainability of the school in time for the remaining MEMORIAL STONE….
The 12th MEMORIAL STONE will be our 45th Anniversary in the year 2025!
I knew this would be a long blog post because when I shared these thoughts in chapel last week, we went over by a few minutes, but it was our last chapel of the year, and the students were very attentive.
What better way to wrap things up than with this talk of MEMORIAL STONES so that someday… When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean?’ YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO TELL THE NEXT GENERATION THE STORY OF GOD'S PATIENT PROVISION TO CALVARY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS.
