Seniors : Achievements, activities : Woman Gives Preschool to Church

St. Callistus School now has a preschool facility, a gift from the local senior who managed it.

Cordelia “Dee” Veenstra has donated the Holiday Garden Preschool on Haster Street, which she and her husband owned and managed for more than 16 years. Her ill health and her husband’s recent death prompted the gift, a school spokesman said.

The 78-year-old benefactor has a long history of magnanimity, however. For the past 15 years, Veenstra and her late husband, Ernest, donated First Communion attire to the most needy children in the parish, spokesman Beau Menchesa said.

“They are just delightful people all the way around,” JoAnn Erdman, office manager at St. Callistus Catholic Church, said of the Veenstras.

Said Sandra Wohrman, principal of St. Callistus School: “Dee and her husband had a great love for children.”

The building at 12132 Haster St. is now closed. It will reopen in the fall as St. Callistus PreSchool.

Wohrman said she expects it to have full enrollment from the start. “There is a great need in this area for child care,” she said.

To honor the Veenstras, school officials plan to install a plaque bearing their names and to plant a rosebush dedicated to them.