BOTERMANS

Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 05:20:11 :

Independent Journal
Saturday, December 22, 1979
Page 4

Rev. Karel Botermans

The Rev. Karel Botermans, minister emeritus of the Unitarian Fellowship of Marin, died this morning at a local hospital.

Botermans, 56, retired in 1973 from active service after 18 years as a minister.

He was born in Amersfoort, The Netherlands.

During the German occupation of Holland, he was a member of an underground movement and organized one of its branches in the northern provinces of his native country.

From 1945 to 1947 he was a public relations officer in the Netherlands State Department in the Hague and also in England and Scotland.

He came to the United States in 1947 on a scholarship from Hope College in Holland, Mich., where he earned his B. A. Degree in 1950.

He also earned a master’s at the University of Michigan in philosophy in 1951 and taught a year at the same university.

From 1952 to 1954 he worked at various factory jobs in New Jersey before entering Meadville Theological School at the University of Chicago where he received his bachelor of divinity degree.

In 1957 he became a minister of the Unitarian Church in Flint, Mich., where he served until 1962, when he moved to California to take the post in the Marin church.

In addition to his ministerial duties, Botermans was active in community affairs including the county Human Rights Commission, Switchboard of Marin, Planned Parenthood and the Bay Area Ministers Association.

Botermans received wide notice in 1963 when he refused to pay part of his income tax as a protest against the Vietnam War.

His wife, Dorota, died in 1970.

The couple had two sons, Christopher and Matthew, and two daughters, Silvia and Lucia.

Funeral arrangements are pending at Russell and Gooch Mortuary in Mill Valley.