Archie Verspeeten was ‘pillar of the community’

A donation of $20 million from the late Archie and Irene Verspeeten was announced Tuesday morning by the London Health Sciences Foundation.

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The historic donation, the largest received by the medical centre, by the family will go to the London Regional Cancer Centre, which will be renamed the Verspeeten Family Cancer Centre.

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Archie Verspeeten, 92, of Delhi, founder of Verspeeten Cartage, died Saturday.

“He was always a family guy, he always made sure everyone was looked after,” said Mark Verspeeten, one of Archie’s five sons. “It was family first.”

At the young age of 22, with a Grade 6 education, Archie established Verspeeten Cartage in 1953.

“He wanted to leave the farm,” said his son Dennis Verspeeten. “His dad said, ‘You’ll never make a living in trucking.’ He had to borrow the money for his first truck. That’s how it all started.”

Verspeeten Cartage has been 100 per cent family owned and operated for the past 70 years, expanding from Delhi to Tillsonburg to Ingersoll. Archie officially retired in 2006.

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“(Archie) was a private fellow, too, at the same time,” Mark said. “He was a humble guy.”

“He never wanted any accolades,” said Dennis. “I remember taking him grocery shopping in Delhi, and people would thank him for his donations. He was more embarrassed than anything else. He just said, ‘Delhi’s my home.’”

Dennis said Archie believed in giving back to the community and he hoped his family’s donations would inspire others to give.

“That was his motivation, that was our motivation,” said Dennis.

“He was a very kind, generous man,” said Lori Yeo, Delhi Community Health Center building administrator. “An incredibly nice man, and very humble.”

The Delhi Community Health Center held its official ribbon cutting opening ceremony in October 2003 and Archie was there from the beginning.

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“He definitely was a huge contributor, he has made several large gifts to the community health center,” said Yeo, noting a $1.5 million Phase III donation announced in 2018, when Archie, with his wife Irene in memoriam, contributed to a $3 million expansion now known as the Archie and Irene Verspeeten Family Wing.

“This is very nice – very good for the community,” Archie said in 2018. “I’m very proud of this. It was my wife’s idea to donate toward this, and that was a good idea.”

“He was just the sweetest man,” Yeo said.

In 2022, Archie donated $3 million to the London Health Sciences Foundation to support the Archie and Irene Verspeeten Clinical Genome Center at London Health Sciences Centre, founded after a similar $3 million donated by the Verspeeten family in 2020.

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“The Verspeeten family are pillars of the community,” said Stephen Welch, a medical oncologist at LHSC in 2022.

“My wife, Irene, and I know first-hand the cost that can come with a cancer diagnosis,” Archie said in a statement at that time. “I wish for no family to endure such pain and no patient to experience such suffering. I want nothing more than to end cancer completely.”

“He was a very generous gentleman, very business minded, very community minded,” said Gerry Dearing, executive director of the Tillsonburg District Memorial Hospital Foundation.

Archie and family recently donated $1.8 million to the Tillsonburg District Memorial Hospital Foundation toward diagnostic imaging and a new CT scanner, located in what is now known as the Archie & Irene Verspeeten and Family Diagnostic Imaging Center.

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In the past five years, Archie and the Verspeeten family have donated $3 million to the Tillsonburg hospital.

“He was a very, very nice man, and highly regarded in the communities where he developed the business,” said Dearing. “He wanted to support the communities where he lived… and for him and Irene, health care was a focus.”

Public visitation for Archie Verspeeten is 2-6 pm and 7-9 pm Tuesday at Murphy Funeral Home in Delhi. A funeral mass will be held at Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs Roman Catholic Church in Delhi on Wednesday, Nov. 29 at 10 am with interment in the Delhi Cemetery.

Memorial Donations to the Delhi Community Health Center or Campfire Circle (Camp Trillium) will be gratefully appreciated by the family.

With files from Postmedia

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