CRC Printing Plant Employee Retires with Many Memories

Tim Reitsma’s more than 40-year tenure at the Christian Reformed Church in North America’s printing plant comes to an end on Dec. 31, less than a month before the operation itself is scheduled to close its doors for good.

“I’ve been happy. I’ve felt secure here. This has been a good, Christian place to work,” said Reitsma, 61. But at the same time he wishes that the printing plant were staying open. “I don’t like to see this. It is the end of an era,” he said.

CRCNA officials announced in early November that the Grand Rapids printing operation would close in mid-January 2008 and that some of the work would move to RBC Ministries, also in Grand Rapids.

John Bolt, the CRC’s director of finance and administration, said at the time that the decision came “after months of analysis that focused on evaluating our priorities in terms of the type of ministries and services the CRC provides, as well as on the future space needs of the ministries of the CRC.”

Employees working in the printing operation will be transferred to other responsibilities within the CRC or offered positions at RBC Ministries, Bolt said. Ten employees will be affected by the change.

As he leaves the plant at the CRC offices in Grand Rapids, Reitsma says he takes away many good memories, among them meeting and marrying his wife, Judy Bronsink. She worked for more than 30 years for CRC Publications, the publishing division of the CRC.

Reitsma also carries with him, he said, the realization that technology has totally transformed the printing business.

When Reitsma began his career, “hot lead typesetting” was used on letterpresses to put words onto pages. He was there when printing moved to various photographic and offset press technologies, and leaves at a time when computers are involved in all parts of the production process.

The CRC’s printing operation began in 1919 in a building in downtown Grand Rapids. It moved to its current location at Kalamazoo Avenue and 28th Street in 1956. At that time, the area around the plant was primarily rural and included farms and a dog cemetery, says Reitsma.

Reitsma graduated from South High School in 1965 and landed a job at the CRC’s printing plant a year later. Initially, he ran a machine that addressed the denomination’s Dutch newspaper, De Wachter, and The Banner, which was then a weekly publication. He then took a job driving a delivery truck for the CRC’s printing operation and now retires as a shipping clerk.

He has seen the products produced by the CRC expand from, for example, small Sunday school papers and newsletters to full-fledged curricula, books, and other printed materials.

He said has also seen the printing operation change from being the main activity at the office in Grand Rapids to becoming a secondary, and soon to be non-existent, process.

When he retires, he plans to relax and spend more time with his wife. Looking back, though, he sees that his career taught him a great deal and allowed him to be part of a family he loved. “It’s been a good place, but it is time to say ‘goodbye’,” he said.

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