Dirk Hendrik van der Elst

1933 - 2024

Dirk Hendrik van der Elst

June 15, 1933 - September 18, 2024

Fresno, California - Dirk died after a brief illness at the age of 91. He was born to Dingeman and Clasina van der Elst in Dordrecht, Netherlands, the first of three children. He and his mother and siblings survived the Hunger Winter near the end of WWII while his father was a forced laborer in Germany. In 1948, his family emigrated to Salt Lake City.

After graduating high school, he served in the US Army as a radio operator in the Korean War and in Alaska with the 30th Topographic Engineer Battalion. With a string of bad luck and his penchant for questioning authority and being eruditely insubordinate, he served in 29 outfits in 36 months. Sometimes he was the only white soldier in an otherwise all-Black outfit as the military began integrating its forces. Before coming down with Long Covid in 2020, he regaled friends and family with his Army stories. Many were humorous, others harrowing, a few, shocking.

After his honorable discharge from the Army, Dirk became a naturalized citizen and attended university on the advice of the engineers who befriended him in Alaska. He earned a BA and MA in Psychology from the University of Utah and participated in the University's archaeological survey of Glen Canyon before it was flooded to create Lake Powell. He went on to earn a MA and PhD in Anthropology from Northwestern University. He did ethnographic fieldwork with the Kwinti, a group of descendants of enslaved people who established autonomous societies in the remote forested interior of Suriname, a former Dutch colony in South America.

Dirk was a beloved professor of Cultural Anthropology at California State University, Fresno from 1969 to 1991. He was chairman of the Anthropology Department for many years and was instrumental in defending it from the depredations of campus administrators, often giving "no quarter" to those he opposed. In addition, he was Founder and Director of the Multi-Cultural Institute, which provided students an unparalleled opportunity to do ethnographic fieldwork among the many cultural groups in the San Joaquin Valley.

The classroom was Dirk's stage where he excelled in delivering stimulating lectures. He recruited a large portion of Anthropology majors, notably among them, Jo Anne Kipps, who took his introductory class 50 years ago and would later become his wife. After his retirement he distilled two decades of teaching Introductory Cultural Anthropology into a textbook titled, Culture as Given, Culture as Choice, published by Waveland Press.

Dirk was a unique individual, an affable freethinker with an inquisitive mind and a fierce intelligence. His Army dog tags were stamped "Y" for religious preference because, when repeatedly asked his religion, he persisted in asking: "Why?" He was renowned for his hot short-lived temper that led one colleague to dub him a "Teddy Bear with Fangs," a moniker that pleased him mightily. A gifted writer and an exceptional editor, he was also skilled at drawing and photography, especially portraits. He enjoyed jazz and Pink Floyd and was an avid reader of science fiction. He maintained his Dutch accent through the decades, joking that he practiced it daily. His laughter was hearty and infectious and his whistling, extraordinary. To the delight of many, with his rubber face, he was able to express every emotion under the sun, a pre-digital human emoji.

A special thank you to Dr. Steven Chooljian for providing excellent medical care to Dirk in his later years, and to the Emergency Department and ICU staff at Saint Agnes Medical Center.

Dirk was preceded in death by his parents, sister, Clasina Jenkins, and first wife, Lynne Dykman, with whom he had two sons. He is survived by his best friend and devoted wife of 43 years, Jo Anne Kipps. He is also survived by his sons, Darren and Bram, brother, Willem, grandchildren, Isaiah van der Elst and Audra Shaw, five great grandchildren, many nieces and nephews, and second wife, Kathleen Schovajsa.

In lieu of a formal service, the family encourages friends, colleagues and former students to celebrate Dirk's life in their own way and to share their memories of him on the Legacy.com website.