1969 WHS grad Barb DeVries in the battle of her life

Barbara Hydorn Keil DeVries, a 1969 graduate of Wayland High School, has seen many challenges in her lifetime, but her biggest one has just arrived — brain cancer.

DeVries this week begins radiation and chemotherapy, but the tumor is inoperable, her doctors have told her.

“They told me they can’t cure me, but they can buy me some time (perhaps as many as four to seven years),” she said. “I couldn’t believe I had a brain tumor, it was overwhelming when they told me.”

DeVries underwent serious examination earlier this month as a result of several warning signs — she began to drag her left foot and one day recently she noticed she was drooling on the left side of her face.

“I was afraid I’d had some kind of mini-stroke,” she said.

Spectrum physicians immediately ordered an MRI scan on June 6 and by June 8 she was diagnosed with a problem virtually no one wants to hear about.

“Right up until then (when the symptoms appeared), I was doing everything at a normal level.”

But Friday, June 3, was to be her last day of work at the Kent County Community Action Agency, which helps low income people with things such as food, rent, utilities. She had been specializing in working with clients on reducing energy consumption.

But from now on, DeVries has been ordered not to ever be alone.

“I can no longer drive (a motor vehicle) and I have to have a baby-sitter twenty-four seven,” she said.

DeVries had held a variety of positions at the agency over the last six years, but now she’s the one who needs the help. She’s already getting a lot of support from her husband, Denny, and her two daughters, Briana Keil and Melissa Keil Collins. Briana works at the Auto Action just north of Wayland and Melissa lives in Muskegon with her two children.

Barbara Hydorn graduated from Wayland High School and attended Grand Valley State University, where her fiancé, Richard Keil, was going to school. The two married in late 1970 and she dropped out of GVSU and they lived in Alabama, Missouri and Kansas for five years before returning to this area to help their ailing parents.

The two divorced in 1983 and DeVries had to face the challenge of raising two daughters as a single mom. She tried to go back to GVSU and work part time, but the economic demands mounted.

She didn’t re-marry until 1996, after she met Denny DeVries. She then worked for many years in management and accounting at J&J and Associates Trucking Co. near the railroad on the west side of the city.

“I have no idea where this journey is going; it’s obviously frightening,” she said.

She compared death to pregnancy.

“It has an ending, there is no escaping it,” she said philosophically. “But life, on the other hand, has a lot of options.”

She said her greatest support comes from Briana, Melissa and her husband, but she also treasures her close friendships with fellow WHS grads like Karen Fifelski Slater and Mary Torrey DeVitto.

DeVries helped Slater during the difficult times of her husband Paul’s cancer and eventual death, so now Karen is returning the favor.

Like the rest of us, however, she doesn’t know how much time’s she’s got, but she intends to live her life as fully as possible.

PHOTO: Barb Hydorn Keil DeVries (left) with daughter Melissa Keil Collins and her two daughters and daughter Briana.

Barb Hydorn Keil DeVries (left), her sister-in-law Renee (center) and Briana Keil.