HOLLAND (WHTC-AM/FM) — A founding board members for Out On The Lakeshore is retiring from the board, so she can spend more time with family and friends.
Karen Prins, who was one of the initial board members for OOTL when it was founded in 2015, said her resignation was prompted by her turning 70 and wanting to spend more time with those closest to her. Her replacement has not yet been named.
“I have reached the great age of 70 (and don’t mind saying so!) and I would like to chill out more and spend more time with family and friends, all who live not just locally but across the country as well,” Prins said. “I love to travel.”
And traveling is not always easy when you are involved in as many LGBTQ causes as Prins. She is an active member of the Holland/Lakeshore PFLAG chapter, was one of the initiators and initial facilitators for a transgender support group in Holland (now known as Gender SAFE), helped plan and put on the first outdoor PRIDE Festival, and is a former Holland Is Ready board member.
She had no plans to be as active in the local LGBTQ community when she moved back to Holland in 2008 to take care of her ill mother. But then she attended a local Holland/Lakeshore PFLAG meeting in 2009 and everything changed.
‘I was fortunate to attend my first PFLAG support meeting in 2009. My whole existence in Holland, as a lesbian, took its positive trajectory from that point because of the support and care I experienced in this group for all LGBTQ individuals,” Prinssaid. “I consider PFLAG Holland/Lakeshore to be Holland’s crown jewel.
“That helped me to start making connections in Holland with others working towards social justice and equal rights,” Prins continued. “Then Rev. Jen Adams spearheaded a new organization in January 2010, called Holland Is Ready. Wow. Good things continued to happen!”
Prins, along with PFLAG Holland/Lakeshore facilitator Mary DeRidder and Jim Larkin, who was a member of both PFLAG and Holland Is Ready, became the backbone of efforts to hold an outside PRIDE Festival in Holland. PRIDE events had been held in the past but always indoors and Prins, DeRidder and Larkin wanted to make it more visible, just as efforts for equality for LGBTQ residents became more visible. With the help of Holland/Lakeshore PFLAG, they held the first outdoor PRIDE Festival in 2013 in Centennial Park.
“These PRIDE events that PFLAG sponsored through the years, were held inside, at a church, or in the Park Theatre. They were a great show of support for the LGBTQ Community, for a night, every June, but they were less visible than the usual festivals planned in other towns and cities,” Prins said.
“If it had not been for the overwhelming support of Jim’s vision by PFLAG, I do not know what things would be like today in Holland.”
But her proudest moment, she noted, was helping to open an LGBTQ Community Center in Holland. She has served on the Out On the Lakeshore Board, which united Holland is Ready and the Holland PRIDE Festival, since its inception in August 2015. The Community Center opened in 2017.
“It has been wonderful to experience the support we have found for Holland’s first-ever LGBTQ Community Center,” she said. “It’s hard to express. We all know of Michigan’s conservative west coast. However, Out On The Lakeshore, since its beginnings as a concept, in 2015, always seemed to go forward with support from places we never dreamed would be as supportive as they are!
“What I want to say is that there is a determination, in the hearts of many, many folks wanting to give love and acceptance to Holland’s LGBTQ Community, that simply has made any ‘No’ turn somehow into a ‘Yes.’ Wow. Go Holland!”
For more information on the OOTL Community Center, 451 Columbia Ave. in Holland, and its programs go to www.outonthelakeshore.org and www.Facebook.com/outonthelakeshore.
