Hewitt Homeschooling Resources

March of 2003 marked my 20th year of working with homeschoolers. Looking back, I can see that only God could have maneurvered all the forces that brought this grassroots movement into playing a dominant role in my life's work.

Prior to becoming a Christian in 1973, I had managed a warehouse and sales office selling to photographic dealers on the East Coast. This gave me exposure to almost every aspect of business. Not long after becoming a Christian, I felt God leading me towards mission's work in Europe. I attended Indiana University part-time, and then graduated from Jackson College of Ministries where I also was in charge of the girls' dorm of approximately 100 students. For the next three years I worked at a small Bible college in West Germany where I taught, cooked, and counseled. These were marvelous years living in a 50-room, somewhat dilapidated, mansion, Schloß Freudenberg, in the middle of a rose garden. But the highlight was working with the European young people. Perhaps my favorite thing in life is sitting around a table, with great food of varying nationalities, discussing God and the meaning of life with young and old alike.

From Germany I moved to the Pacific Northwest to teach in another small Bible college which ended up folding my first year back. I was 32. My roommate did some volunteer work for an organization called "Hewitt-Moore Research Foundation" and when she couldn't provide the level of secretarial skills they needed, she recommended me. I became Dr. Moore's personal secretary in the spring of 1983. In January of 1984, I started my own business, and handled all of the business aspects for three home-schooling organizations: Home School Legal Defense, Christian Life Workshops, and The Teaching Home. As each organization grew to a size that demanded their own offices, I ultimately found myself back at Hewitt. Unintentionally, I worked my way up the ladder, and finally became president in 1994.

So, I guess that about sums up my life. I love working with young people, teaching, languages, and reading. In my younger days scuba diving was a favorite pastime. Now I content myself with looking at pictures of former dives. My favorite authors are C.S. Lewis, George McDonald, Dorothy Sayers, and Elizabeth George. In one of Dorothy Sayers' inimitable novels, Harriet Vane asks Peter Wimsey, "Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?" His reply would also be mine: "So easily that, to tell the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober."

-April Purtell

(April is Hewitt's president; she is also in charge of Hewitt's foreign language department and grades all the French and German.)