The Pilot News - Culver bids farewell to a tireless servant

Arthur “Art” Edwin Birk was born Feb. 23, 1934 to Delbert Victor and Ruth Faye (Lane) Birk in LaPorte, attending Teegarden grade school, graduating from Tyner High School in 1951, and living most of his life in Marshall County.
A longtime member of the Blissville Church of the Brethren, he served in the Brethren Volunteer Service in Maryland and Texas from 1951 to 1957 as a conscientious objector. Birk’s Culver connection began when he married Patricia “Pat” McGaffey at the Grace United Church of Christ in Culver on Feb. 23, 1957, after which the couple moved to Plymouth for a time while Art worked for Coca-Cola and Pat at Montgomery Ward.
The couple’s son William Eugene was born in May, 1960 in Plymouth, and shortly thereafter the couple bought their home (in October, 1961) on North Plymouth Street in Culver, the same home in which they spent their Culver years and in which Pat lives today. Ruth Ellen Birk, the couple’s daughter, was born Oct. 14, 1964.
Besides Coca-Cola, Art worked at Sealed Power in Rochester, Torrington Bearings in South Bend, and retired from DePuy Orthopedics in Warsaw, attending North Manchester College as well.
Known to some as “Mr. Fix-it” and to others as “Red” due to his hair color, Birk over the years built many race cars from the frame up, besides building and flying his own, one-man gyrocopter. In more recent years, his trademark became the 1946 Indiana Chief motorcycle which he restored. He even took the ABATE motorcycle safety course at age 74, says Ruth Birk. Through the years, too, his natural mechanical ability would benefit many Culverites, especially those older or with lesser means, for whom he would fix items needing repair at a moment’s notice.
“Anything anybody asked him to do (to help), he did it,” says Ruth, adding her father had an opportunity in younger years to put his racecar aptitude to use with big-name Indianapolis racing drivers, but Art Birk felt “his family and community were too important to travel all the time.”
In 1973, Birk became Marshall County’s first EMT, six years before Culver would form its own Emergency Medical Services department, of which Birk was a founding member as Culver transitioned from Bonine Funeral Home operating the local ambulance service to the Culver-Union Township Emergency Medical Services, alongside then-township trustee Ron Gleason. A number of meetings took place at the Birk house, recalls Ruth, towards grant-writing to obtain Culver’s first ambulance rig, and Birk involved Culver’s volunteer fire department in extrication classes in the 1970s as well.
For several years, Art Birk was part of the ever-popular Maxinkuckee Players and Singers, assisting with set building for plays including construction of a four-horse carousel.
Of course, it’s Art Birk’s involvement with Culver’s Lions Club — which he joined in 1975 — for which so many remember him, and rightly so: his service with that organization, locally, statewide, and even nationally, has left a mark on the Culver community amongst others, and touched countless lives.
Among countless other endeavors with the club, Birk was one of many Culver Lions working almost daily with Lion Elmer Hahn during the purchase and renovation of the Culver Vandalia railroad station-depot into a community building in the early 1980s, a massive project whose benefits will be felt for decades to come.
Art and Pat were both heavily involved in the Lions’ Youth Exchange program, bringing as many as 60 youth from other countries to Culver (including the Birks’ own home) and nearby communities each year as well as sending a number of local and statewide young people to 10 different countries around the world. Lions International, in fact, named him as a “Top 10 Youth Exchange Chairman” for two years running, during the 1980s.
Art Birk served the Lions in most every position available, including twice as its president. He was Lions District G vice governor from 2001 to 2002, and District G governor from 2002 to 2003.
Birk was a two-time (in 1990 and 2007) Melvin Jones fellow, a humanitarian award which marks the highest honor conferred by the Lions International Foundation (his wife Pat and son Bill are one-time recipients of the award). He also received, in 1991, the Lions’ International President’s Award for Outstanding Service, one of the most prestigious awards a Lion can receive.
In addition to his work with Lions, in recent years Birk made “many trips to Culver’s food pantry” as well as helping out with last year’s “Gift of Warmth” effort via the LMax Film Festival in Culver. He ran back and forth to Elkhart to pick up scrap material for use in Culver High School’s Industrial Tech courses as well as used clothing for community distribution, says Ruth.
The Lions Club is known internationally for its work in eye care, and Art Birk worked via the Lions in a number of capacities towards that end, including organizing eye screenings for area children in recent years.
It was Birk’s commitment to eye care which led to his service in a capacity, earning him recognition across Indiana, as a 14-year member of the Indiana Lions Eye and Tissue Transplant Bank, which he served as chairman and treasurer.
Eye Bank chairman Nelson Nix recalls Birk’s great contribution in moving the organization from its cramped quarters of 47 years at the Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis, to its own building, a move which Birk helped raise funds for and organized. In recognition of his hard work and tireless effort, the Eye Bank named one of its conference and training rooms after Birk at the September, 2008 dedication of the new Center.
Nix recalls news of any disaster prompted Birk to ask, “What do they need?” be it hurricane Katrina in New Orleans or closer to home, the tornado-struck town of nearby Nappannee.
“He was a very astute thinker.” says Nix of Birk, “He was not argumentative, but assertive and constructive, and he embodied the Lions motto of, ‘We Serve’…he was a great friend and a great Lion. His service to others was the guiding principle of his life. He was my right arm.”
With that, few in Culver would disagree. “Art was a true and trusted friend,” says fellow Lion and longtime Culver funeral home director Jim Bonine, recalling Birk as the maintenance man for Culver’s ambulance when Bonine operated it. “I introduced him to Lionism and had the pleasure of being his sponsor in the Culver Lions Club. His work in Lionism on the local, state, and national levels has been outstanding. He will be missed.”
Another fellow Lion, Lake Maxinkuckee Environmental Council director Kathy Clark, agrees. “Art’s depth of caring for his community was evident in everything he did,” she says. “He showed himself to be a true friend to others during trying times.”
Clark adds Birk’s pancake recipe has been used by the Culver Lions for many years. “It was Art’s secret that (made) them great!” she adds.
Art Birk was also, of course, a loving husband and father, and undoubtedly it is his family who will miss him most.
“Do the work of the church and do the work of the people that need served,” says Ruth Birk of her father’s motivation in life. “He lived his life to help and serve others in any way he could.”
Nor does she exaggerate when Art Birk’s daughter says, as can all of Culver, “Anywhere we look, there’s something Dad did.”