Take note of this: The Rev. Dr. Albert DeVoogd and I co-founded the Marriage and Family Center back in 1974. We each played to our strengths and made it happen.
Al was 25 years my senior. A man of great intuition and intellect, Al became a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist as the field was just emerging sixty years ago. During the 70’s and 80’s, he conducted supervision groups at the Center and dozen of clinicians from West Michigan came to the Center weekly to be tutored in the art and craft of working with relationships. Al moved his office to the Center in 1980 and worked with us for 15 more years, until leukemia took away his vital life.
He was a stern man with a soft touch, and a suppressed funny bone. A keen theoretician, he developed a model for working with relationships that was on the cutting edge. Many were trained in his “tri-Modal Structuring” and it is the fundamental framework I use to this day, now known as “Integral Theory.” Marriage and Family Therapy was a discipline to Al, and one had to master the discipline to become a professional. He could demanding, and unbelievably gracious at the time. He was a wonderful kindness to us all.
But Al was not much of a business builder. Entrepreneurial in spirit, Al struggled where I was stronger. His brains, wed to my brawn, made for a great combination. He tolerated me a lot and I worked around him. Together for twenty years, we added staff, weathered storms, and launched what is today’s Fountain Hill Center.
Here is the point: it takes a team of people, gathered around a shared vision, weaving their individual strengths together, to manifest goodness, truth, and beauty in this world. Be that a team at home, at church, at work, in our government… or at The Fountain Hill Center.
We are all yet blessed by Al DeVoogd and his commitment to building relationships. Al passed on in 1995, recognized as a Fellow in the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and as a wonderful mentor, supervisor, colleague, co-founder, and dear friend.
We are stronger together.
By: Andy Atwood
