Obituary
In the care of Solemn OaksNorma Hoekwater, 87, of Fremont, died at home on Sunday, July 26, 2026, after fifty years as the librarian at First Christian Reformed Church, where she stamped the due date inside a thousand Bibles and study books and fully expected every one of them back.
She was born Norma Feenstra on March 19, 1939, in Fremont, the second of four children, and lived her whole life inside the sound of the same church bells. She married Case Hoekwater in 1959, raised three children in the white house on Stewart Avenue, and took over the church library in 1974, when the woman who had kept it retired and no one else raised a hand.
For fifty years she was the library. She hand-lettered the catalog cards, mended broken spines with a bone folder and a patience that unnerved people, and stamped the due date inside the back cover of every Bible, concordance, and Sunday-school reader that left her care. She ran the summer reading table for the children, kept a locked drawer of the volumes she considered too good to risk on the honor system, and knew, without consulting the cards, exactly who had which book and how many weeks past due they were. She was gentle about it. She was also correct.
Away from the shelves she was a fierce euchre player, a maker of the kind of pie crust that gets discussed at funerals, and the reliable last stop for anyone in the congregation who needed a casserole, a ride, or a person to sit with them in a waiting room. She never learned to drive on the highway and never needed to. Everything she wanted was in town.
She asked for no fuss. The library she leaves behind is in perfect order, every card in its place, which is exactly how she would want you to find it.
She is survived by her children, Karen (Doug) Sikkema of Fremont, Paul (Lisa) Hoekwater of Grand Rapids, and Nancy Vogel of Newaygo; nine grandchildren; fourteen great-grandchildren; and her sister, Betty Timmer of Holland.
She was preceded in death by her husband of fifty-nine years, Case, in 2018; her parents; and her brothers, Harv and Melvin Feenstra.