Martha Debbink ’51 Beld

Martha D. (Debbink) Beld, 94, of Holland, died January 10, 2024.

Martha was a 1947 graduate of Wauwatosa High School (Wisconsin) and also studied at Hope College in Holland. She married Gordon Beld in 1950 and lived in the Grand Rapids area from 1950-1965 and in Alma Michigan from 1965-1989. When her husband, Gordon, retired in 1989 they moved to Freedom Village in Holland where she resided until her death.

Martha was actively involved in community service throughout her life. While in Alma she was the site manager of the Gratiot-Isabella Commission on Aging’s “Food with Friends” program for several years and was active in many other community and church organizations. She was one of the organizers and a board member of the Listening Ear, an Alma telephone crisis intervention service, and she was a member of the board of Alma’s Friendship Center. She served on a committee which provided Christmas gifts and entertainment for more than a thousand underprivileged Gratiot County children during five years in the 1970’s. In the 1980’s she was a tutor in the Gratiot County Adult Literacy Program. At Alma United Methodist Church she was a member of the Administrative Board and chairman of the Mission Commission. She also was active in the church’s sponsorship of a family of Cambodian refugees in the early 1980’s and, with her husband, recruited sponsoring churches for five more families in Gratiot County. After moving to west Michigan following her husband’s retirement, she was involved in mentoring two Vietnamese families with Amerasian children and in Holland she was a principal sponsor in the resettlement of three families of refugees from Kosovo. She was a pastoral care elder at Christ Memorial Church in Holland.

She was predeceased by her husband, Gordon G. Beld; daughter Barbara J. (Thomas) Wagner; sisters, Mary Janice Younger and Carol Wehrley; and brothers, David H. Debbink and John D. Debbink.

She is survived by her son, Dr. Scott G. Beld of Ann Arbor, Michigan; her daughter, Dala J. Beld; son-in-law, Antxon Basurko; grandson, Alar Basurko; granddaughter, Dala Basurko of Pasai Donibane in the Basque Country of Spain; a foster daughter, Heng Eap of Long Beach, California; and sister-in-law, Nancy Debbink of Okemos, Michigan.