Father
Robert Clarence Vande Hey, O. Praem., age 84, a member of the Norbertine
Community of St. Norbert Abbey,
De Pere
,
WI
, and a Norbertine priest, passed into God’s eternal kingdom on Wednesday,
June 10, 2009.
Father Vande
Hey was born on July 19, 1924 in
Hollandtown
,
WI
, to Peter and O’Delia (Meulemans) Vande Hey.
His home parish was St. Francis Seraph Parish,
Hollandtown
,
WI
.
In 1942,
Father graduated from the Salvatorian Seminary,
St. Nazianz
,
WI
. He received a B.A. degree in
Philosophy from
St.
Norbert
College
,
De Pere
,
WI
, in 1946 and a Ph. D. in Biology from the University of Notre Dame, Notre
Dame, IN in 1961.
Upon
entering St. Norbert Abbey, he was vested as a novice on August 28, 1943.
He professed Simple Vows on August 28, 1945, Solemn Vows on August
28, 1948 and was ordained to the Priesthood on June 11, 1949.
For the
first years after his ordination, Father Vande Hey taught at
Southeast
Catholic
High School
in
Philadelphia
before his assignment to the biology faculty at
St.
Norbert
College
in 1955. (He retired as
professor emeritus in 1989). Over
time, he attended graduate and post graduate classes in biology at the
University
of
Wisconsin-Madison
, the
University
of
Pennsylvania
, the University of Notre Dame, and Mount St. Mary College,
Los Angeles
, the latter with a Research Fellowship awarded by the Atomic Energy
Commission.
His doctoral
dissertation drew international recognition, accolades , and honors.
Father Vande Hey received a post-doctoral fellowship from the
National Institute of Health’s U.S. Public Health Service to study at the
University of Mainz, Germany, where he continued mosquito research under the
director of the
Institute
of
Genetics
, the world authority on mosquito genetics.
Father Vande Hey’s research and its results were published in
various professional journals.
Other
ministries included formation with students at Catholic Theological Union,
Chicago; chaplaincies at St. Mary’s Hospital, Duluth, Minnesota, and
Benedictine monasteries of nuns in Duluth and in Idaho; and associate
pastorates in Madison and Wyoming.
He was the
first Norbertine to encourage the adoption of an Order-wide International
Website to enhance communication within the Order and to increase knowledge
of the Order worldwide. His
strong, good humored advocacy eventually won the day among the Order
Hierarchy, resulting in www.premontre.org and the Internet Commission of the
Order.
Father Vande
Hey is survived by the Norbertine Community; three brothers, Earl, Eugene (
Virginia
), and Arthur (Teresa); three sisters, Gladys Tennessen,
Sr. Eugenia, OSF, and Grace (Marvin) Zwick.
He was
preceded in death by his parents.
