Bethel College professor drowns in Michigan lake
The Associated Press July 4, 2012 9:40PM
Updated: July 4, 2012 10:22PM
MISHAWAKA — Students and staff at northern Indiana’s Bethel College are mourning the death of a professor who drowned during a fishing trip to Michigan.
Eugene Carpenter drowned Monday after police said the 69-year-old South Bend man swam into southern Michigan’s Kirk Lake to try to retrieve a boat that drifted into the lake as he was launching it.
The South Bend Tribune reports Carpenter was a professor of Old Testament and a scholar-in-residence at the Mishawaka college, where he taught for 26 years. He is survived by his wife, Joyce D. Carpenter.
Bethel President Steven R. Cramer compared Carpenter to a giant oak tree, saying the college community “will greatly miss the shade of his influence in our lives.”
Carpenter’s funeral will be Saturday at the college’s Everest/Rohrer Auditorium.
