Mark Herald '82, Deputy Director of Public Safety

Mark Herald, the deputy director of public safety for East Grand Rapids, has a lot of fond memories of Calvin - everything from playing doubles for the tennis team with fellow 1982 graduate Jim Doezema to life in the residence halls to life-changing classes as a history major.

But one of the things he remembers most clearly, even 20 years later, is a telephone call from a professor.

"I was taking Latin," Herald says, "and I was not a great Latin student. I remember I had missed a couple of classes in a row and one day, sitting in the dorms, the phone rang. It was my professor, Ken Bratt. And he was calling to see how I was, see if I was going to be coming to class the next day. That was amazing to me. He cared enough about me, an average student, to call my room and encourage me. I'll never forget it."

For Herald it validated his decision to come to Calvin.

"My professors at Calvin," he says, "were personable and they took an interest in you. And they made you work. I came to Calvin knowing I would get a great education. And I did!"

Although Herald credits Calvin's faculty for cementing in him a love for learning and a desire to make a difference in the world, it was his tennis partner who got him going on his current career in law enforcement.

Doezema was dating the daughter of Gerry Steele, then deputy chief of police for Grand Rapids and now director of campus safety at Calvin. Doezema knew from conversations with Steele that law enforcement agencies were eager to hire minority candidates. So he introduced Herald to Steele, an introduction that eventually got Herald started in law enforcement and began a friendship that continues to this day.

Herald began working, after his 1982 graduation from Calvin, for the Grand Rapids Public Schools, an experience he still recalls with fondness.

"You could still have an impact on the kids," he says of those days spent in the city's high schools. "And the kids looked to you for advice. You were kind of an older brother or surrogate parent to a lot of them."

Herald then attended police academy and was hired on by the Grand Rapids Police Department, where he spent almost 20 years before taking his current post as second-in-command for the East Grand Rapids public safety department.

Among his highlights at the GRPD was the creation of a program to bring senior citizens in as volunteers to augment the work of the police - everything from answering minor calls for service to doing found property reports to writing handicap parking citations.

The program was a huge success. In fact, in 1997 it won the Weber-Seavy Award for Outstanding Quality in Law Enforcement, an honor Herald compares to an Olympic gold medal. But it also taught Herald a lot.

"Working with those senior volunteers," he says, "was one of the most memorable things about my years (with the GRPD). A lot of them (seniors) had been in World War II or Korea. And sometimes we would get talking about their experiences, about freedom, about suffering. A lot of young people don't understand what it is to have things hard. These men did. Yet, even at the age of 60 or 70 they still wanted to serve their community. They taught me a lot of history, a lot of lessons."

Herald says those lessons were a continuation of the education he received from his parents, both of whom were physicians in Muskegon, where Herald was born and raised.

Herald's dad, Osbie Jewel Herald, grew up poor and African American in Dallas, Texas, two huge hurdles, says Herald, in the era in which his dad was raised. Yet he went to college and then went on to medical school at the Ohio State University before beginning a wonderful career as a caring physician in Muskegon. Herald's mom, Anita Marie Herald, meanwhile grew up in Boston, was white and a graduate of Harvard Medical School.

But when Anita and Osbie met at Ohio State, they fell in love, were married and together moved to Muskegon to begin their careers in medicine.

"Interracial marriages have their challenges even now," says Herald, whose wife is white. "But back then those challenges were even greater. Yet that's not what I remember about growing up. I remember parents who helped people, often behind-the-scenes, parents who wanted us to get a good education, parents who taught us how to serve others and make a difference."

Herald says those lessons from home were reinforced at church, as a member of a Congregational Church in Muskegon, and at school, including West Michigan Christian High School, from which he graduated in 1978, and eventually Calvin.

Perhaps it's no surprise that even today Herald feels called to public service, especially as a person of color.

"There is still a distrust of police in the minority community," he says, "but I'm working to change that. And there is still a huge need for women and minorities in public service."