Larry Byle

Larry Byle, Honorary 

2022 Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame Inductee

Posthumous
Service to HPS and Community

Larry Byle graduated from Kelloggsville High School in 1950. He then attended Grand Rapids Junior College and received an Associate Degree in Education and in 1954, he received a BS (with an emphasis in Science and Physical Education) from Albion College. He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the University of Michigan and got his first teaching job at Berlin High School in Marne. 

In 1957, Larry began his teaching career at Hudsonville, teaching freshman English and Bible classes. The following year, he moved to the Science Department, where he continued teaching Earth Science (his passion) until his retirement in 1995. 

During his time at Hudsonville, Larry coached varsity baseball for thirty-seven years, JV football for twenty-one years, was a varsity football assistant coach for four years, and the freshman basketball coach for two years. Larry was inducted into the high school football and baseball coach’s hall of fame. He was also the first to receive person the Hudsonville Athletic Boosters Eagle Legacy Award. 

His biggest love of all was teaching science. In 1978, Larry Byle and Dave Bolhuis founded the Summer Science Institute and began taking twenty-six students out west for three weeks each summer to take an in-depth look at Field Geology and Biology. 

Over the three weeks out west, the students travel by bus through the Badlands, the Black Hills, Wind Cave Park, Devils Tower, the Tetons, Yellowstone, and Glacier Nation Park. The group tents at their destinations, prepares their meals, takes turns setting up and cleaning up, and bonds through the challenge. Students learn teamwork, discover a new way of life and make lifelong friends. They push their minds and bodies every day. The students return home and become the leaders of their class. The teachers who lead these students do not teach just one hour a day but have them all hours of the day for three weeks. 

Today, the Summer Science Institute has been operating for forty-three years. As of 2022, 1,006 students have participated in the Summer Science Institute. It has afforded students career goal aspirations, self-confidence, a love of the outdoors, and a yearning to learn, among many other things. 

Larry Byle passed away on July 28, 2021, at the age of 89. He is survived by his wife, Gloria, four children and their families. In his obituary, Larry wrote the following words to his students of forty-one years of teaching: “One of the aspects of teaching that is the most rewarding is getting to know and working with young people. You were all special to me."