Dates: 1944–
Role at AFLCR: longtime board member from 1998; liaison to Saint Michael’s College
Dana Lim was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia; two years later her parents’ work took the family to Iran. Dana was educated at a French missionary school, where she learned French. In 1952 the family emigrated to the United States and settled in New Jersey. She earned a B.A. in French literature at the University of Rochester, studying at the Sorbonne her junior year. She completed a master’s degree at Rutgers University and served as a teaching assistant in the Romance language department there while it was an all-male institution.
In 1967 Dana was hired as a one-year replacement in the French department at Cedar Crest College, a women’s college in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. She ended up staying there eighteen years, serving both as an assistant professor and as a part-time administrator. In 1979 Belgian-born Marc vanderHeyden became the academic dean and vice-president for academic affairs. He shared Dana’s ardent Francophilia, and a few years later, while Dana was director of admissions, they married. During her many years at Cedar Crest, Dana was an active member of the Alliance Française and of the American Association of Teachers of French, for which she served as president. She conducted January term projects in Paris for several groups of students and also directed a production of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone (en français) for the Lehigh Valley’s French community.
Throughout their married life, Dana and Marc worked as a pair. When he became vice-president for academic affairs at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, they relocated to Dutchess County. Dana worked full time at Dutchess Community College for nine years. In 1996, after Marc was named president of Saint Michael’s College, they moved to Vermont.
Upon their arrival, both vanderHeydens became fascinated by the college’s French roots. It had been founded in 1904 by members of the Society of St. Edmund, a group of French priests who had left France, as a result of its anticlerical laws, and settled in Vermont. Edmundite priests were still present on the campus when Marc and Dana arrived, and they decided to learn as much as they could about the Edmundite history.
Pontigny and Beyond
In the summer of 1997 they traveled to Pontigny, where the Society of St. Edmund had originated. There they met the last remaining French Edmundite, Father Philippe Simmonet, who guided them in their research and suggested places they should visit. At his suggestion, they visited Mont-St.-Michel, the breathtaking abbey on a tidal island where Edmundites had been in charge of the parish ministry in the late 19th century.
After making these and several other stops, they returned home and developed their journey into an itinerary for the following year, a group trip so they could to share the experience. “It was a wonderfully rich history,” Dana told me, “and we wanted the St. Mike’s community in Vermont to get to know it.” The 1998 group included four Edmundite priests, twelve college faculty and administrators, and themselves. The group visited Pontigny, the Mont St.-Michel, and other Edmundite-related sites such as Collège Saint-Michel at Château Gontier and the Benedictine Abbey of Pierre-Qui-Vire, in addition to the invasion beaches on the Normandy coast, ending with a short stay in Paris.
The French Heritage Trip was a huge success. Following the blueprint, the vanderHeydens continued to lead the tours, later adding the British sites associated with Saint Edmund, until Marc’s retirement as president in 2007. Thereafter, Father Marcel Rainville, who had coordinated the summer visits with Dana for a few years, took over. Every year the tour participants came away with a new appreciation of their heritage.
At the AFLCR
From the AFLCR’s inception in 1998, Dana was an active member of the board. She helped out in every way, large and small. But most notably she brought the Alliance into fruitful collaboration with Saint Michael’s, which with her support presented a range of Francophone events every year, including screenings of many Francophone films.
Every March, for example, Saint Michael’s hosted Francophony Week, featuring French-language events. One year AFLCR board member Patrick Buffet gave a presentation on “France, Vive la différence” for Francophony Week, while Carol Reed organized fifth graders singing French songs and dancing. Also in March, the college would put on a full-fledged spelling bee at the McCarthy Arts Center, as a fundraiser for literacy. Forty local organizations sent teams of three to compete: the AFLCR’s mighty spellers were Henry Weinstock, Monique Martin, and Grant Crichfield.
A bit later in the spring came Haitian Solidarity Week, where AFLCR folks could attend a lecture, say, on Haitian women and state terrorism. In 2001, Dana helped arrange a cooking demonstration by AFLCR board member Madeleine Kamman, a renowned French chef, as a fundraiser for the firefighters who had helped save lives on 9/11. One April, AFLCR board member Tim Kahn gave a lecture and slide show about his film on Basque shepherds, for which Kamman prepared a Basque cake. In May came a “Vue d’afrique” festival. all at Saint Michael’s.
Saint Michael’s Centennial
In addition to creating Francophone events at Saint Michael’s, Dana poured her energy into revitalizing the college’s art scene, displaying more public art around campus, and expanding the program of concerts, performances, and lectures. She is credited with building a lasting legacy of commitment to the arts at Saint Michael’s.
In 2004 the college celebrated its centennial. Dana co-chaired the committee that organized the 18-month celebration. She helped to initiate a series of “Fireside Chats,” or informal conversations with notable educators. During the centennial celebration, Dana hosted the visit of Madame Hélène Lebrec, a resident of the Mont-St.-Michel who was conversant with the Edmundite history and who had met many of the Vermont “pilgrims” on the Heritage Trips.
To contribute to the centennial celebration, the AFL organized a Franco Fête, with performances by local singers, including Nikki Matheson, Josée Vachon, Le Bon Vent Group, Bretons & Co, and Jean-Jacques Psaute, delighting listeners with songs from Burgundy and Normandy, the two regions with Edmundite significance.
Also in 2004 the Alliance hosted the Bardot Boys Choir from Paris, who were touring north America. Eric Bataille organized their appearances in Vermont: the choir performed on the Saint Michael’s campus on July 17, then at a mass at Isle LaMotte. The Boys Choir returned in 2007 and performed at Saint Michael’s, co-sponsored by the AFLCR.
AFLCR: Space for a School
For some years, the AFLCR’s lack of a fixed venue had prevented it from offering regular French-language classes. In March 2006, then-president Monique Martin asked the vanderHeydens whether Saint Michael’s might have a space that the AFLCR could rent affordably, one that would be large enough for classes, offices, a library, and a reading room.
The answer was yes, and in the spring of 2007, the AFLCR finally got a room of its own: a second-floor space in the Dupont building at the Ethan Allen campus of Saint Michael’s in Colchester. The lease was affordable; it had no furniture, but President Martin appealed to AFLCR members for donations, and they came through with armchairs, a table, and a whiteboard. Dana and Marc themselves donated a desk, several bookcases, and a good number of books. Having a permanent space created, said Martin, “a palpable sense of excitement among our board and education committee members.” In July an education committee was formed to organize regular classes in French, which soon were under way.
Left to right: Dana, Father Marcel Rainville, Marc vanderHeyden, François Gauthier (French consul in Boston)
As President Martin would rightly observe, the AFLCR’s partnership with Saint Michael’s was “critically important” and “key to the stability of our organization and the foundation of our school.”
After Saint Michael’s
Marc stepped down as college president in the summer of 2007. Upon their retirement from Saint Michael’s, “the Marc and Dana vanderHeyden Endowment in the Fine Arts” was created in their honor, to which contributions were made. The college awarded them both honorary doctorates. Middlebury College did the same, making them the first married couple to receive honorary degrees at Middlebury.
At the AFLCR, President Martin honored the contributions of both vanderHeydens at a special gathering, naming them lifetime members and gifting them with two pewter plates to mark the occasion.
As the Champlain Quadricentennial of 2009 approached, Dana applied her skills at transatlantic organizing to building connections between Burlington and French places involved in the life of Samuel de Champlain, who had explored the Lake Champlain region. In May 2009 she directed a trip called “In Search of Samuel de Champlain’s France,” as a fundraiser for Burlington City Arts; it planted the seed for the sister-city relationship between Burlington and Honfleur, the port city from which Champlain’s voyages had departed. She was involved in building this connection at nearly every step. In appreciation of her work, the city of Honfleur bestowed on her the honorary title of “Ambassadrice de Honfleur aux États-Unis,” at a ceremony in the Honfleur Hôtel de Ville in October 2014 led by Mayor Michel Lamarre.
Today the vanderHeydens live in Rhinebeck, New York, where they are active in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum and the Eleanor Roosevelt historic site, Val-Kill. They travel frequently and have visited 100 countries on five continents.
In addition to her long service on the AFLCR board, Dana has served on the boards of the American Red Cross (Northern Vermont chapter), Burlington City Arts (later BCA), Heritage Winooski (advisory board), the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, the University of Vermont Lane Series, Vermont Public Radio (later Vermont Public), the Vermont Symphony Orchestra (regional board), the Vermont Council on World Affairs, and the World Affairs Council of the Mid-Hudson Valley.
We salute this Founder for her many contributions to the AFLCR and to promoting Francophone culture in northern Vermont.
Cover photo by Elvira Tripp.