Beverly Ruth Wiebe—Bev—was born
March 13, 1956, in Kajiji, in the Belgian Congo, to Arthur and Ella
Voth Wiebe. Art built schools and clinics and maintained mission
vehicles, while Ella, a nurse, provided health care and education to
the people and their children in the region. With the advent of a
revolution, in 1960, that would free Congo from Belgian colonial
rule, the Wiebe family flew home to the United States. Four-year-old
Bev, looking out the window of their airplane as they flew across the
US, saw clouds below and thought they were on the ground, “but
someone moved all the clouds when we landed.” Flying with Bev were
her sister, Janice, and her brother, Carl, both of them born in the
Congo. Another brother, Dale, flew with them unseen. He would be born
in Garden City, Kansas, where Bev’s Wiebe grandparents and her
Uncle Ted were farmers. At home in “Garden,” the family welcomed
two more boys, Glenn and Virgil.
The Garden Valley Mennonite Brethren
Church, a new congregation founded the year before Bev’s family
left the Congo, became a central part of Bev’s early life. There
she professed her faith in Jesus Christ and was nurtured by Sunday
School classes and Sunday worship services. She also learned the
ministry of compassion from her parents, who welcomed people of all
kinds into their home. On Sundays, the dinner table was often
expanded to include guests invited to join the Wiebe family of eight.
As the oldest of six children, and with her mother working as a nurse
and her father working for the State of Kansas to provide services
for the blind, Bev took more than her share of responsibility for her
siblings and chores around the house. She carried that sense of
responsibility throughout her life, along with a duty to care for
people in need, especially children.
Bev’s concern for children led her,
first, to pursue a teaching career. She began her own education at
Georgia Matthews Elementary School, in Garden City, and Garden City
Junior High, before graduating from Garden City High School, in 1974.
For the next four years she studied at Tabor College, in Hillsboro,
Kansas, majoring in elementary education. She began teaching first
graders the following year. Her experience as a teacher led Bev to
consider school children in relation to their families, and this led
her to a different vocation. In 1982, Bev began a program at Kansas
State University in Child and Family Development, earning a Master of
Arts degree in 1985. Her degree focused on marriage and family
therapy. Upon graduating, Bev moved to Reba Place, in Evanston,
Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. There she began a counseling service
with John Lehman where, as in every dimension of her life, Bev
strived to integrate her faith with her work.
In 2000, Bev returned to Kansas and her
beloved Flint Hills to begin a family-therapy practice in
collaboration with John Lehman in Florence, Kansas. While Bev
counseled children and their parents, her deep desire for children of
her own went unfulfilled until she adopted a newborn, Michael
Christopher, in 2002. Soon after, Bev moved her practice and family
to Hesston, Kansas, where Lisa, her adoptive cousin, joined them.
Lisa, who had Down Syndrome, came to live with Bev and Michael when
her parents, Nettie and Ted, could no longer care for her. Lisa lived
happily with Bev and Michael until her death in May 2019, 30 years
later than doctors had predicted.
Bev’s life included crushing
disappointments and pain, concern for which she waved away to talk
about others whose circumstances were worse. She worried that her
contributions to people’s lives were not truly significant, despite
the host of people who have testified to the significance of her role
in their lives; for some, she was lifesaving. Although some of Bev
Wiebe’s life dreams were not realized, in her life too-soon ended,
she enriched more lives than would take two lifetimes.
In every chapter of her life, Bev
maintained a keen sense of humor, an eye for the simple beauty of
God’s creation, and a fierce love for Michael and the rest of her
family. In Evanston, she created intricate mobiles that brought the
delicate balance of the Flint Hills prairie to her home, and she
pressed flowers to decorate hand made and heartfelt cards to her
friends and family. A keeper of the land and protector of nature, she
grew a prairie paradise around her own home, tending her garden with
dear friends like Cindy Combs and Lorna Harder.
Even as her body’s strength faded,
her indomitable spirit remained.
She leaves behind her son, Michael, as
well as her five siblings and their families: Janice and Ben
Ollenburger, Mary, Katherine and her husband Michael Chester; Carl
and Marcella Wiebe, Daniel; Dale and Elizabeth Wiebe, Aaron and
Nathan; Glenn and Maura Wiebe, Jake and Erin; and Virgil Wiebe and
Susan Schmidt, Maggie and Lucas. She goes to join Lisa; her parents,
Art and Ella; her aunts and uncles. May they find perfect peace.
In lieu of flowers, Bev requested
memorial funds be sent to:
Asian Youth Services
ATTN: Shari Fenton, 5701 N. Sheraton
Rd, Apt 6N, Chicago, IL 60660
Village2Village
12175 Visionary Way, Ste 106, Fisher,
IN 46038, or online at village2villageproject.org
