Westra, Dewey

Author

b 1899, d 1979. As a schoolteacher in Detroit, USA, of Dutch Reformed ancestry, he keenly felt the loss of the Dutch Psalter (with its Genevan tunes) and supplied several metrical Scripture versions to the 1931 1st edn of the Psalter Hymnal of the Christian Reformed Ch in N America. To fit these tunes he eventually put all the Pss in English metrical versions, 18 of which appear in the 1934 edn, ‘the red hymn-book’. Its 4th edn (1987) includes one Psalm version, a metrical text of the Ten Commandments and 3 NT paraphrases including an amplified approach to ‘Our Father’. He was also a reviser of Toplady and other classic authors. No.711*.