Category: Alumni Profiles

When you talk to Ken and Judi (Brink) Draisma ’77 about the nonprofit they started in Pullman, MI, they’re pretty nonchalant and matter-of-fact about it.

As if one starts a much beloved community nonprofit as a daily endeavor, like brushing your teeth or feeding the cat.

It was about 17 years ago back in 2008 that the Draismas started People Helping People in Pullman, Michigan, on land they owned, with very few plans for all that it would become.

“It’s a God story, really. It’s amazing how people have come alongside us,” Judi said recently. “It’s grown way beyond us now—we claim Psalm 139:5, ‘You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on me.’”

“We definitely call it a God-led vision with no personal vision,” Ken added.

The Draismas never imagined at the start that People Helping People (PHP) would soon become a nonprofit running on about $900,000 a year, serving just under 700 area families, with 21,000 meals, and 90-100 kids after school and throughout the summer. The rural underserved town of Pullman claims about 3,000 people, with an average poverty rate of about 31.8% (Census Reporter, 2022); it makes sense that many of the Pullman residents served by PHP struggle with various addictions, unemployment, food security, and a lack of utilities like electricity or heat.

How is it that one ends up creating a community nonprofit to serve a town that you don’t even live in?

Let’s back up just a bit.

Ken and Judi met midway through their senior year at Holland Christian High School, connecting through mutual friends. After graduation, Judi attended Calvin College briefly before graduating with her medical secretary science degree from Davenport University.

And Ken went straight into farming, having worked for a farmer in high school, and really enjoying it. Due to both the commodities and the livestock shipped in and out of the farm, Ken eventually started a trucking company, Pro Vision Transport. Today Pro Vision Transport Inc services many local businesses and three out of their four children manage the current business.

But back to People Helping People: Always an entrepreneur, one day in 2005 Ken drove down to Pullman for a real estate auction with his eye on several parcels of land in the area that included a registered sand pit.

“I was purchasing a parcel of land with a sand pit and an office, but with no big agenda or vision,” he said. “And it kinda turned into seeing the community down there, the poverty. We were hearing that some ministries wanted to get into the community…”

The couple decided to throw a community summer picnic (as one does?!) with games on the lawn and a pig roast in order to get to know the community, to “establish a presence,” Ken said. “And it grew from there.”

At that first picnic—the first of many over the years—the Draismas handed out a survey to the people who came. The survey responses revealed a common theme of no hope. So People Helping People started trying to bring hope, with a very humble beginning: home repairs, heating assistance, a listening ear, help navigating government assistance programs—while also working to establish relationships and trust in the community.

The Draismas quickly utilized the sand pit with the trucks, but did not have a specific vision for the office building on 56th St. which was on the main drag through Pullman. After recognizing the poverty in the area, and having previously supported the work of Love INC, the Draismas extended an invite for Love INC to establish a presence in the poverty pocket.

They wanted to respond with a listening ear to the poverty they saw around them—to the difficulties of no transportation, no internet, rental houses with dirt floors and leaking roofs—bringing in Holland area community groups to help with home repairs, a night of worship, and hot meals. Surrounding churches got involved and invested, making warm coats available in the fall, backpacks stocked with school supplies for kids going back to school, food handouts, Christmas gifts, and a place to meet friends from in and out of the community. Pullman—a community with no hope—now had a beacon of caring people and a local staff available to help.

“It was a faith-based organization right from the start,” Judi said. “A faith-based effort that turned into a 501C3 organization. So many willing hearts, generous supporters, caring and kind Christ followers support People Helping People.”

With their oldest three children already graduated from Holland Christian, their youngest a junior, Ken and Judi saw the need for an after school program, and decided to add that piece into PHP as well. Today about 90 kids get off the bus at PHP, down a snack, do homework with available adult help if needed, and then enjoy free time in the gym or outside with adult mentors until their parents can pick them up at 5:30-6pm after work.

Over time, Thursday nights have become Christ-centered evenings, with free dinner and a Bible lesson for any one who shows up. Usually 80-100 people will show up for dinner—families, adults, kids, and then after eating dinner together separate into “kind of like Sunday School groups, where volunteers give Bible lessons and love on them,” Judi said.

“The community has gained trust and appreciates who we are,” Ken said.

In 2016 they started dreaming of building their own building to house PHP; in 2018 they hired a full time executive director, Jeff Kruithof ’91, who has his own God story of trying to leave the nonprofit sector, but feeling called back into it through PHP. Much of the nonprofit program operated out of the semi-run down church nearby and eventually on the property, which with the help largely from Ridge Point Church in Holland they were able to renovate.

Two years ago they finally finished a whole new building, complete with room for a community food pantry, some showers, and a small laundromat.

“We had a grand opening in the community, made our presence there known, and have had a lot of growth since then,” Judi said.

Ken and Judi no longer run PHP, but Ken remains on the board as vice president, along with his son-in-law, Daris DeGroot, and seven others. They periodically go out for church on Sundays, mow the lawn frequently, and help out with any needed maintenance around the place.

“It’s the ‘Sand Pit Story,’” Ken said. “That sand from the sand pit is under each one of those buildings. God’s plan is not our plan—it’s just how it unfolded. We had some excavating equipment, our sons were involved in the building, our kids go volunteer, and our grandchildren have the opportunity to volunteer alongside us. That’s a big deal for us.

Besides being grateful for the churches and people who support PHP to keep it running, the Draismas are “always challenging the community themselves—that if you’ve been helped, pass it on,” Ken said. “Relationship is a big part of what we’re doing down there—it’s not just handouts and showers. We’re trying to show that hope, that love. It’s been pivotal in the community.”

Judi likes to quote Deuteronomy 31:8 as a testimony to God’s work in Pullman and the Draisma’s progression with the community there: “‘The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you, He will be with you, He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not be afraid, or be dismayed.’”

“If I were to speak at an HC chapel, I would tell those kids to be bold with their faith and what they’ve learned at HC,” Ken added. “God uses everybody with different skill sets. They don’t have to go to the other side of the world or a different country—just a half hour south of us is a community that needs basics for life and needs to know who Jesus is.”

“They don’t have to go to the other side of the world or a different country—just a half hour south of us is a community that needs basics for life and needs to know who Jesus is.”

Believe it or not, somehow Nicki Bonczyk ’08 manages to have a life of her own.

She attends friends’ weddings, travels on vacation (Bermuda is a favorite), runs half marathons—two last year—and completes puzzles—pretty massive ones, honestly. The largest puzzle she ever completed was over 40,000 pieces!

Which is amazing, because on top of working full-time as a mechanical engineer for JR Automation—a job she has worked since graduating from Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in 2012—Nicki also coaches the Holland Christian High School robotics team, known in the Michigan robotics world as “Team 107.” Actually Nicki coaches both the HCHS and HCMS teams. Which means that she is coaching robotics 3-4 times a week for nine months of the year—since the middle school season is in the fall, from September through December, and the high school robotics season runs January through April. Oh, and Nicki typically coaches and gathers the team once a week in the summer too. And did we mention that she does all this on a volunteer basis—for free?

Nicki’s involvement with HC’s robotics team all started as a family affair with her dad, Bob Bonczyk, who helped start the HCHS robotics team back in 1995, when Nicki was barely a kindergartner. As a tool and die maker at what was then Prince Corporation, Bob realized the huge impact that a high school robotics team could have not only on local students and their futures, but also as a positive investment into the local workforce. Over the almost 30 years that Bob helped coach robotics, he became known not just state-wide, but even nationally for his robotics mentorship.

“I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where things like robotics were cool,” Nicki said, adding that for years her mother toted her and her little sister along to all their dad’s robotics coaching events. “So when I got to high school, I already knew that it was cool to hang out with the stereotypical ‘nerd,’’’ she laughed. “Like I already knew this was fun. It wasn’t just you had to be good at math, you had to be good at science. I just knew you had to have fun!”

“I knew they traveled, they had this great team bonding stuff, and everyone just seemed to have a really great time—and of course great dad-daughter bonding,” Nicki added.

She joined the HCHS robotics team as a freshman in 2005, with really no expectations. But then realized that the team was more than just fun: “I really loved what we were doing. The idea of creating something from nothing, hands-on building and prototyping was a great thing to be involved with. I remember asking my dad, ‘How do we get paid to do this?’” Nicki recalled, not having any idea yet as a 14-year-old what an engineer does, or even that it was a thing.

So after she started to pursue what her life would look like after high school, and since the robotics teams compete regularly at GVSU, attending there felt natural like a second home. But she also liked GVSU’s engineering program because it is one of two Michigan colleges that require a co-op program enabling their students to work at an actual business for college credit.

When Nicki had to apply for her work co-op, she headed straight to JR Automation, having already experienced as a high school robotics team member that JR Automation sponsored local robotics programs. She completed her three years of undergrad co-op at JR Automation, and then started working there right out of college.

“I get paid to play with robots! [JR Automation] works in automation, so I turned my ‘this is a really fun high school sport!’ into somebody paying me to do this,” Nicki said.

In her day job as a mechanical engineer at JR Automation, Nicki helps solve customers’ problems using automated machines with specific functions. “I work on the computer designing the equipment with CAD, very similar to robotics students solving problems with a robot they designed with CAD,” she said. “These two worlds play back and forth together extremely well!”

During college Nicki volunteered with the FIRST Robotics organization helping referee robotics events throughout Michigan. As soon as she graduated and was working full time, she started coaching robotics, and launched the middle school robotics team that HCMS shares with Zeeland Christian Middle School.

Hearing Nicki talk about robotics makes you a believer in robotics, too. She gushes charismatically about how great the kids are, how robotics gave her an extended family, fun, and a career. How they have an amazing support group of mentors all with unique skill sets, some of whom are HC grads. How some HC robotics team volunteer mentors come from sponsoring companies and as professional engineers see the need to help train the workforce of the next generation. How they have amazing local STEM companies like MetalFlow, Koops Automation, Tommy Car Wash, JR Automation, and more who sponsor them. How the HCHS robotics team volunteers in the Holland community on a regular basis, since service is a huge part of robotics—both on and off “the court” so to speak.

“It’s the only high school sport that anyone can go pro in,” she adds delightedly.

Robotics is a rapidly growing high school sport especially in Michigan, where we have more high school robotics teams—516—than any other state. Each January high school robotics teams are given a challenge through a website drop by FIRST Robotics Group, the overarching robotics governing body that divided Michigan up into its current 16 geographic robotics regions.

Last year’s challenge was a game called “Crescendo” where teams needed to design a robot to pick up and throw rings to score more points than their opponents’ robots. After the challenge announcement, the HC robotics team, with the help of local business mentors, got to work planning, designing, building and then programming their 150 lb robot to solve the problem.

The 20-some person team participates in 2-3 all day Saturday competitions each season to test their robot up against other high school teams and hopefully qualify for the state meet. Teams win the actual competition if their robot performs the best, but they also are put into alliances with other high school teams and need to strategize together. So there’s competition, collaboration.

“What’s really cool about this sport is we are highly competitive; however, there’s this huge sense of community,” Nicki said, explaining that HC’s team spends a lot of time with Zeeland Public’s team practicing together. “They’re our rival school, and our kids could care less…we’re swapping parts back and forth so often. There’s this huge sense of—we call it ‘gracious professionalism’—it’s doing your best while helping others achieve their best.

“At the end of the day we love to win—but not at the expense of not helping someone else do their best,” she added, describing how the HC robotics team joined the Holland High and Zeeland Public teams to create a giant Tulip Time parade float. “When have you ever seen the rival schools in the area do community service projects together and have a great time?! I don’t think you see that with other sports teams, clubs having that significant bonding.”

All this collaboration and community kindness overflows into the larger community as well. Since local STEM businesses fund HC’s Team 107, students are encouraged to go out and give back to their community too. They volunteer regularly at Community Action House on weekends, sorting groceries. They’ll hand out groceries for Feeding America, pushing the grocery carts through the snow so the older people don’t need to. They’ll decorate 100s of Kids Food Basket lunch bags in their downtime at practice. They helped move furniture at ditto in October so the carpet could get cleaned. The robots regularly visit VBSs in the area.

“Those kids are in the community a lot, and they enjoy it,” Nicki said, adding that there’s a general understanding of “Why wouldn’t I give back to a community that gives us so much? You give back to those who give you so much!”

This sense of community seems embedded in the team, seeps out of their pores, since they have been awarded the FIRST Impact award—the highest award a team can receive—five out of the last 6 years.

“That’s something our team is probably the most proud of,” Nicki said. “It is given to a model team that exemplifies the true core values of robotics. It speaks to the students’ community service and their commitment to be heroes of science and technology—not only sharing that this is a cool thing to do, but also hundreds of hours of service.”

By winning the FIRST Impact award and gaining enough points in competition, HC’s robotics team has earned enough points in the state competition to make it to the world’s competition at least 20 out of the last 28 years.

“We need a very high sense of ownership from students to make this work,” Nicki said, explaining how expensive it is for HC students to go to World Robotics, to send 20 students there for a week along with their robot. With zero funding from Holland Christian itself, students raise their own funds through letter writing campaigns, can drives, and local sponsorships. Last year Kendal Electric was so impressed with a presentation that the HC robotics team gave to them that they paid the robotic team’s world registration fee.

Last year was an especially difficult year for Nicki, her family, and the robotics team, since Nicki’s dad, Bob Bonczyk, had a heart attack in November of 2023, recovered enough to go home, but then got an infection that caused his death in January.

Suddenly she was dealing not only with her family’s emergency, but a team emergency as well: “My dad was the backbone that held our team together—in sports terms, he was our ‘quarterback,’” Nicki explained. “My dad was a giant child—so he was not only their mentor, he was that real good positive influence on their life.”

Obviously the mentors themselves were reeling and hurting. “We told the kids, as adults we’re broken. We don’t have time to dilly dally; you’re going to have to step up. And our kids came to the plate to play. They were bound and determined that they were going to come home with trophies, because Bob had to be proud of them,” she finished.

The loss hit Nicki and her family obviously really hard, but “it hit these kids just as hard,” Nicki said, explaining that robotics kids showed up at the hospital to visit Bob, sent cards regularly.

“In robotics we’ve always been a family. Like we are not just a sports team—we are a family,”

Nicki said. “And I think those bonds between mentors, students, parents, alumni—we had alumni from 2020 who came and supported us this whole season.”

Former robotics teammates like Lily Johnson ’23 and James Oosterhouse ’23 home from college on Christmas break took over the parts inventory, spending their Christmas vacation days organizing everything for the upcoming season.

Flowers and donations poured in after Bob’s death in January from all over Michigan, even from robotics teams out of state, since Bob was known and loved even nationally through coaching the HCHS robotics team—including from robotics vendors, GVSU’s Engineering School, GVSU Athletics Events, other colleges where robotics events had been held over the last 30-some years. Nicki and her family raised over $20,000 toward a memorial scholarship in Bob’s name for a Michigan robotics student thanks to all these donations.

“It’s a tragic sad thing that’s happened to our team, but it has bonded us in a weird way. Our kids feel—they already felt a sense of ownership on the team—and they feel even more that way,” Nicki said. “This loss not only affected us, but it affected Michigan—he was so involved with so many teams.”

Throughout the season, people from other teams, people who Nicki and the students didn’t even always know, would come up to them and share condolences, start crying, tell their favorite stories about Bob. It was a hard season for the robotics team last year, and although the team somehow made it to the state championship, it was the first year in a long time they didn’t make it to the world championship. But Nicki is already back at it with the school teams.

It’s pretty telling that an alumni profile article about Nicki Bonczyk ends up to be mostly about the HC robotics team, and about her dad, and much less about her. That’s kind of the way she is? But if you run into her at any robotics meets or non-profits around town where she and the robotics team are volunteering, please make sure to ask Nicki about herself. She’ll still probably talk most of all about her “kids” and her “robotics family.”

And you will find yourself entranced for however long she does.

Vern says that he fell in love with Carol back in junior high at Holland Christian Schools, but that they didn’t date each other until they were both seniors. Probably because Carol was so busy running the Echoes as yearbook editor for all four years, playing lead roles in the school plays, and with her nose in a book in general, since according to them, she was “the academic one” of the pair.

Vern kept pretty busy himself playing basketball—his real passion in high school, and though he did enjoy science classes, he never considered himself very academic.

Which is kind of crazy—and hopeful for current parents of “non-academic students”—since after graduating from Holland Christian and Calvin College—where he majored in engineering and played both basketball and tennis—Vern went on to University of Michigan where he completed his MA. He finished his PhD at Imperial College in the early 1970s because they were the only college then with a program in tribology—Vern’s lifelong passion outside of Carol, and that is also his profession.

“The privilege we have to be able to do something worthwhile for mankind, to be using the physical world God has given us to be able to do wonderful things!” Vern exclaimed. “The way the science works out is absolutely remarkable when understood—physics goes on to do things you’d think would be utterly impossible!”

While at University of Michigan, Vern discovered tribology, or the “science of friction, lubrication and wear for interacting surfaces in relative motion,” (thanks Wikipedia) largely thanks to a U-M mechanical engineering professor, Kenneth Luddema. “Christ has a way of putting people in your lives that make a difference,” Vern said, explaining that Luddema also was a Calvin grad specializing in the friction and wear of materials. “He got me into the business I’m in. God puts these people and events into life to change the path where you are going.”

So thanks to Luddema, instead of heading off to the Peace Corps, which was their other option, Vern and Carol moved to London for Vern to complete his PhD at University of London’s Imperial College, where he was the only American in the program. Carol, who had completed her elementary education degree at Calvin, taught in the primary school near their neighborhood of Clapham Junction, “not the best area at the time, though the school was very good,” Carol said.

“It was a wonderful experience—I learned a lot. You just take things for granted, growing up in the Christian school in Holland,” Carol added. Clapham Junction was famously depicted for its poverty in the 1968 British movie, Up the Junction, but “the children were wonderful!” Carol insisted, exclaiming how a “student even made me a maternity dress” when she became pregnant with their first child, a daughter.

When Vern finished his PhD, he began working for NASA, and the family moved to Cleveland in April of 1970, so Vern could work on the lubrication of the mechanical systems of rocket engines. “I started the same week of Apollo 13!” he said.

Carol and Vern had three more children while in Cleveland, and besides caring for the family, Carol started writing children’s books, many of them at her kitchen table. She joined editing groups as well, helping other writers improve their writing skills—often at their kitchen table as well. Eventually she wrote and published over a dozen books, many of which are still available on Amazon. She wrote Bible stories in rhyme for the delight of young children, a book on Acts at the request of a Christian evangelist, and stories about Christian missionaries. With titles like “The Easter Cave,” “Just in Time Esther,” “The Story of Baby Moses,” and “Noah’s 2-by-2 Adventure,” they are delightful rhyming Bible stories currently still found in church nurseries, or read by nursery school teachers to their classes on YouTube. A few are currently out of print, though her editor is working to bring them back, with new pictures.

“Her bringing up at Holland Christian Schools equipped her mind and heart for Jesus Christ, and gave her the skills, so she could realize her passion for art and particularly for writing,” Vern said.

“I was a mother and writing,” Carol said. “We still have people coming to my house to read and critique their writing. We sit at our kitchen table, and we stay with our job and we just help each other. The outcome has been surprisingly fruitful,” she adds.

Once she had several books published, Carol was regularly invited into schools as a visiting author—”even public,” she said—to read her books aloud to classes, and talk about the writing and publishing process. “It’s very enjoyable to put children in a position where they can discover what they can do by just writing a few words!”

While Vern boasts easily about Carol’s accomplishments, he’s quieter about his own, so you have to go to his online biography to get details: After working for NASA for years, he started Wedeven Associates, Inc. (WAI), in Edgmont, PA, in 1987, taking out a mortgage on their house just down the street to do so, he admitted. According to LinkedIn, Wedeven Associates is “a small high tech business devoted to tribology research and development. Since 1987 he and his associates have developed specialized tribology test machines and test methods that link fundamental principles of tribology to service applications…” According to Vern, Wedeven Associates “has tested every single oil that flies in the Western world… It’s been a lifetime journey—we revolutionized the way this is done, found new horizons.”

Plus Vern has authored over 60 technical papers on tribology, wrote chapters in three books, holds three patents, and won several awards from the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE).

Another amazing thing? They’re both 82 and Vern still works almost full time—”And still married!” he adds enthusiastically, after celebrating their 60th anniversary in August. Pretty much every morning he still walks the few blocks down to his Wedeven Associates office to complete the complex tribology research they have worked on for over three decades.

“This is not easy, and it takes time,” Vern wrote of his tribology work. “It is an honor to be able to creatively engineer God-given materials and sciences into mechanical systems for the good of mankind—e.g. aerospace propulsion, machines that operate efficiently and preserve natural resources, along with safety and health technologies.”

But that’s not all: “Jesus wants us to be aligned with His teachings and, we can add, engaged within His world of physical sciences,” Vern concluded. “If we yoke ourselves to Him our challenging journey becomes refreshed as we bear the load together to achieve fulfillment. Bearing each other’s burdens is a life-long occupation for purposeful work. I get my strength to complete this journey through Matthew 11:28-30: ‘Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’”

Because of my HC roots, when I was deployed to Iraq, I was able to serve as my company’s Lay Leader. We didn’t have a chaplain with us, so I was asked to help lead Sunday services, pray before we left on missions and support wherever needed.

I am by no means a pastor or Bible teacher, but all those “little seeds” that HC had planted came out and I was able to pass that along:

Seeds from Mrs. O’Brien’s Biology class, showing us how amazing our bodies are and the gift the Lord gave us.

Seeds from Mr. Baker’s PE class that taught us about being Christian teammates and what that looked like.

Seeds from Mr. Lemmen who showed us that math is more than just the numbers.

Seeds from Mr. Walcott and all the Bible memory work, which I didn’t appreciate at the time, but was so beneficial later in life as those verses would come back to me and I was able to use them to bless those around me and to bless myself.

I was able to do this because of the freedom to go to a Christian school earned by the veterans who went before me. Now the Lord was giving me the opportunity to use the seeds I was given. Now I was able to fight to secure those freedoms for the next generation.

Why did you do it?

The thing about Veterans Day is that most veterans are NOT looking for a thank you. I have talked with very few veterans—actually I have never talked to a veteran who has said they did it for the medals or the honors.

They most certainly didn’t do it for the free meal at Applebees.

Some of those things may have been a result of serving in a war, but never the reason why.

So why? Why volunteer? I know not all veterans have had the ability to choose service because of draft, but why?

Many veterans simply say they were called to, something inside of them nudged them in the direction to serve, to try and do the right thing, to give something back for everything they were given. To be the light in the midst of darkness.

That’s often the simplified version of Why. The reality is their Why is YOU. The moms and dads, the brother or sister.

You are the motivation. You are the reason. You are what makes it all worth it.

Knowing that what we do or what we did was to help make sure that you could have choices, that you could have freedom, that you could worship freely without persecution, that you could choose a path for your life that you want to follow.

Yes, that comes with great cost, often life altering costs, but those costs are worth the outcomes.

One of my favorite times of the year is high school graduation. I am sad to see you all go, but I am so excited to see the path the Lord brings you on, the path that is free for you to follow.

Use It

Please take a moment to let this all sink in. To ponder on the many freedoms that you may be taking for granted. As you sit and think about it, ask yourself how you are “using it”?

How are you using your freedoms? It’s a gift, not a right. How are you using it? You don’t have to have the answer. You don’t have to know exactly what you want to be or where you want to go. Put your faith in the Lord for those answers and appreciate and use your freedoms to make a difference in His Kingdom.