Collection 00/MS.465 - Marvin J. Dirks Papers

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary:

Marvin J. Dirks was born Dec. 21, 1911 in Halstead, Kan., the oldest child of Jacob and Anna Zuercher Dirks. He died Nov. 30, 1979 in Bangalore, South India.

He attended the Bible Institute of Los Angeles and graduated from Bethel College, North Newton, Kan., in 1936. Following graduation, he began his career as a missionary in China in 1939. As a result of the war between the Chinese and the Japanese, the family was forced to go to the Philippines to spend three years in Japanese concentration camps.

Following release from the camps, they returned to the U. S. where he resumed his education, receiving a master's degree in music from Northwestern University and a B. D. from Mennonite Biblical Seminary and Bethany Seminary. During the next years he taught at MBS in Chicago, Ill. and Elkhart, Ind., as well as at Bethany Seminary of the Church of the Brethren. He became well-known for directing many choirs and giving vocal concerts throughout the U. S. and Canada.

In 1961 he moved to Massachusetts, where he received a Th. D. degree from Boston University. He taught at Eastern Nazarene College until his retirement in 1978.

During his lifetime he served pastorates and interim pastorates in many churches, among them the Boston Mennonite Church, Bethel Mennonite Church of Mountain Lake, Minn., Quincy Center Methodist Church and Newton Highlands Methodist Church in suburban Boston and North Barnstead Congregational Church in New Hampshire.

At the time of his death, he had just completed one year of a two-year teaching term at Union Theological College of Bangalore, where he was teaching preaching, communications and pastoral counselling courses. He was accompanied by his wife, Frieda Albrecht Dirks.

She survives along with four children, Marvin, Jr., of Newton, Kan., Carole Hilty of Washington, D. C., Anna Rae Dirks of Wollaston, Mass., and Stanley J. Dirks of San Francisco, Calif.; brothers, Norman Dirks of Los Angeles, Calif., and Virgil Dirks of Omaha, Neb.; and sisters, Salome Sperling of Moundridge, Kan. and Florene Dirks of Nigeria.

Memorial services were conducted Dec. 2 at the Wollaston Methodist Church in conjunction with Eastern Nazarene College and at the Boston Mennonite Church.