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Sid Rooy ’50 has never been one to sit still. At 100, the ������Ƶ and ������Ƶ Seminary alumnus still preaches occasionally at Penney Memorial Church on the campus of Penney Retirement Community in Florida, where he has lived for the past 25 years. Several days a week, he volunteers building personal transportation devices—lightweight carts called PETs—for landmine and polio victims around the world. It is a life shaped, he says, by a Reformed conviction that faith without works is incomplete. “There’s something about doing that is essential,” he says. Rooy should know. He has spent nearly a century proving it.

Growing up on a farm five miles outside of Oskaloosa, Iowa, Rooy was the son of Dutch immigrants. ������Ƶ’s Franklin campus was the first Christian school he attended, and 77 years later he still remembers professors like Henry Stob, who taught him in undergraduate philosophy and, years later, at ������Ƶ Seminary.

The Reformed worldview he encountered there became an anchor for all his subsequent studies—including liberation theology at Union Theological Seminary and the Free University of Amsterdam. “The Heidelberg Catechism has always been a pivot point from which I have thought and carried out my work,” he said.

His career took him from director of evangelism at Midland Park Christian Reformed Church in New Jersey to pastorates in the Netherlands and Argentina, before several decades teaching church history and missions at ISEDET, an ecumenical seminary in Buenos Aires.

Now, it is the work of retirement—and the community around it—that brings him joy and delight. Named Florida Volunteer of the Year in 2020, he finds purpose alongside neighbors from 28 different Christian denominations.

“We set ourselves to do something good,” he says. “The greater enjoyment comes from knowing you’ve made a significant contribution in the lives of other people, and together we grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ.”