lit a candle 12d agoMy grandmother used to turn on the gospel hour every Sunday afternoon and that choir would come through clear as anything, forty years she sang with them and I didn't know her name until this obituary but I knew that sound. We'd sit on her porch in Durham with the radio propped in the window. A hundred years old. That's a long time to keep singing.
Their story
Beatrice "Bea" (Herrema) Geelhoed died on Sunday, October 11, 2026, at the age of 100, in the Grand Rapids area of Michigan where she had spent her life. She was not a public figure in the way of a politician, artist, or executive, but her obituary and the response to…
Beatrice "Bea" (Herrema) Geelhoed died on Sunday, October 11, 2026, at the age of 100, in the Grand Rapids area of Michigan where she had spent her life. She was not a public figure in the way of a politician, artist, or executive, but her obituary and the response to it make clear that she was a woman of deep local importance, known across a wide family and a church community for the length and warmth of her life rather than for fame.
Bea was born to Ralph and Hermina Herrema and grew up to marry Martin Geelhoed, with whom she shared 72 years of marriage before his death in 2017 at the age of 94. Together they built a family that, by the time of her death, had grown to include four children, ten grandchildren, 27 great grandchildren, five great great grandchildren, and four more expected. She also raised a foster daughter, Mary Ann Vanswol, extending her sense of family beyond her own children. One of her sons, Tim Geelhoed, and two of her grandsons, Mark and Rodney Huizinga, died before her, losses that her family carried alongside the long arc of her life.
Music was the thread that ran through Bea's life outside the home. She sang for 40 years with the Metropolitan Choir of Praise, took part in church choirs and duets, and performed with the Pine Rest Trio alongside Reverend Ralph Heynen. She was also remembered for traveling on work trips with a group called The Church Master Builders. None of this made her nationally known, but within her congregation at Providence Christian Reformed Church in Wyoming, Michigan, and among her extended family, her voice and her devotion to church life were central to how she was remembered.
Her death, at the full span of a century, was framed by her family as a peaceful reunion with her late husband rather than a sudden loss. No cause of death has been made public, and nothing in the available reporting suggests one was needed beyond the natural end of a very long life. Her funeral home, Stroo Funeral Home of Grand Rapids, published the obituary that first announced her death and detailed the arrangements that followed.
Her passing mattered most immediately to the large family she left behind and to the Providence Christian Reformed Church community of which she had long been part. Plans were made for a public visitation and funeral service within days of her death, and the family asked that those wishing to honor her make contributions to the church's "GEMS" Girls Club rather than send flowers, a request that reflected her lifelong investment in the youth and worship life of her congregation. For the many people who knew her personally, Bea Geelhoed's hundred years stood as a quiet testament to steadiness, faith, and family continuity rather than public achievement.
Biography adapted from News reports and the sources cited on this page; death reported by MLive.com.
That radio show went out further than people realize, I heard it in Ohio too.