Miss Marcella Poppen, age 84, of Orange City, passed away on Friday, May 22, 2009, at the Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City.

There will be a funeral service on Thursday, May 28, at 11:30am, at the American Reformed Church in Orange City. The Rev. Keith Krebs will officiate. There will be a graveside service on Thursday, at 1:30pm, at the Memory Gardens Cemetery in Sioux Center. Visitation will be after 4:00pm on Wednesday at the Oolman Funeral Home in Orange City, with the family present on Thursday, from 10:00am to 11:15am, at the church.

 She was born in 1924, the second daughter of John A. and Dora (Vander Schaaf) Poppen, and grew up on a farm near Sioux Center.  She attended one-room schools in Welcome Township and graduated as valedictorian from Sioux Center High School.

Her career of more than sixty years in music education and church music began with graduation from Morningside College, where she received a B.M.E. degree.  She earned a Master's degree in Music Education from the Eastman School of Music, another Master's degree focused on Church Music and Organ from the University of Oregon, and the Doctor of Music Education degree from Indiana University School of Music. She also studied at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York University, and the Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music.

She had been a music teacher in Cleghorn and Sioux Center high schools when she was appointed by the Reformed Church in America's Board of World Missions to serve for four years at the Baiko Jo Gakuin Junior and Senior high school in Shiminoseki, Japan.  This was followed by fourteen years as music supervisor for the Malverne, Long Island, public schools.  During this time she received Certification by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as an Associate in Ministry, after which she combined her vocation as a church organist and choir master with secular education positions. She also taught at the State University of New York in Brockport, at Simpson College in Indianola, and at North Central College in Minneapolis.

Her part-time church music positions included St. Paul's Lutheran in Valley Stream, NY, First Lutheran in White Bear Lake, MN, Christ Episcopal in Westbury, MN, and St. James on the Parkway Episcopal and Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran in Minneapolis.  She then accepted a full-time church music position at the Bellevue Reformed Church in Schenectady, NY.  A generous legacy to the Abiding Peace Lutheran Church in Budd Lake, NJ made possible several years of full-time service there, and when that was expended she accepted a similar position at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Bloomsburg, PA, from which she retired to live in Orange City.  There she served as one of the organists at American Reformed Church, and continued her life's work and passion for music education through providing Kindermusic classes for young children and, during the last sixteen years of her life, by giving private piano lessons.

She is survived by two sisters, Dorothy Bomgaars of Orange City and Charlotte Peterman of Basking Ridge, NJ, a brother, Alvin, of Fayetteville, PA. and eight nieces and nephews.

 Memorial gifts may be made to the Lutheran Summer Music Scholarship Fund, 122 W. Franklin Ave., Ste. 230, Minneapolis, MN 55404.