Lessons in Hope and Healing

It’s a quiet spring afternoon at George Fox – birds chirp, students lounge on the quad, all is calm. Then, tires screech. A white sports car whips onto campus, engine roaring as it tears across Crisman Crossing, blurs past the bookstore and drifts around the new chapel.

The tail slides, freezing mid-turn – just long enough to catch the bumper sticker: Faith. Grit. Joyride. With a final flourish, the car halts in front of Bauman Auditorium and the door swings open. The driver exits and removes his helmet, revealing the mystery racer’s identity. It’s President Robin Baker.

The action sequence may sound like a dream mashup, but the events actually occurred – minus, of course, President Baker operating as the stunt driver. That was a bit of cinematic editing. The short film, which opened the 2025 Fox Film Festival, was directed by then-senior Jack Flitter, who graduated this May. Jack collaborated with a team of cinematic arts students and industry professionals to create the car chase, which debuted on campus to thunderous applause.

Watch Jack's stunt car video

Faith

Two years ago, Jack would have been hard-pressed to imagine the creation of such a film. As his freshman year ended, his family received two devastating blows: His father was laid off and his grandfather passed away. He moved home just as his grieving grandmother moved in. “It was definitely a low point in my college journey,” he says. “We were dealing with a lot financially, so staying home felt like the right choice.”

Jack worked all summer, saved what he could, and prayed that God would help him find a way to get back to George Fox. He began his sophomore year online from California – all while missing the friendships and experiences of campus life.

As the year ended, Jack received an unexpected call from a friend: His name had just been announced onstage at the 2023 Fox Film Festival. He’d won the Tim Thiessen Cinematic Arts Scholarship. The $2,500 award gave him the motivation to keep saving and the crucial support he needed to help close the gap in his college expenses and return to school the next year.

Grit

The Thiessen family had just wrapped up a joyful year in 2018. Tim and Christine (B87) had just celebrated their 30th anniversary, their youngest had graduated from George Fox, and the holidays had brought everyone together again. But as the new year began, everything changed. Tim, just 53, passed away suddenly. The shock and depth of their loss was overwhelming. “It was almost hard to breathe,” Christine recalls. “Tim had been my partner for 30 years. How was I supposed to live my life now without him?”

Faith, friends and family helped the Thiessens keep going – but healing was a slower, more personal journey. Wise counselors encouraged Christine and her adult children, Sydney (B16) and Jake (B18), to try therapy, which brought some comfort. But what helped most, Christine says, was simply talking about Tim – sharing stories, laughing through memories, and reflecting on the man he was to each of them.

Christine holds a photo of husband Tim Thiessen, who passed away unexpectedly at 53.

Those conversations brought Tim’s generous spirit and boundless imagination vividly back to life. Christine remembers Tim, a computer animator and youngest of six, as “a big kid” who loved drawing cartoon characters, collecting Sunday comics and going to Disneyland. Sydney treasures his artistic side, especially the Daisy Book – a series of sketches he made of their family dog. For Jake, it’s the “dadisms.” He compiled a collection of Tim’s sayings into a book for his mom’s birthday last year. His favorite? “You are unique, just like everybody else.”

A year after his passing, Christine realized they were onto something. As a professional fundraiser for Providence, she had seen families heal through philanthropy and began to see the connection between Tim’s life and helping others. As a family of creators, starting the Tim Thiessen Cinematic Arts Scholarship just made sense. “A big part of my healing was thinking about how we could remember Tim in a positive way and create a legacy that would support students in the same field that all of us earned our degrees,” Christine says.

The opportunity to help students also allowed the family to carry forward Tim’s big heart for service. “I felt like it was a way for him to support students because the money to start the scholarship came from his life insurance,” Christine says. She launched the fund with a $5,000 annual pledge, only hesitating when it was time to name it. Tim had been a joyful giver, but Christine knew he wouldn’t have wanted the spotlight. “The one thing he might be upset about is that his name is on the scholarship,” she says. “He’d say, ‘It shouldn’t be about me.’ But we’re making it about him because we loved him so much.”

Joyride

Christine, Sydney and Jake returned to the Fox Film Festival in April to kick off the fifth installment of the scholarship, where they shared Tim’s story and announced upcoming recipients. This year was especially significant because they also spent the afternoon with Jack, hearing for the first time about the double heartache that kept him home his sophomore year.

“Knowing that we created this scholarship out of our own personal loss and that Jack was one of the recipients made it even more special,” Christine says. “He is so gifted, and I think he’s exactly the person that Tim would want to see us support. He’s just going to be fantastic.”

Jack, too, has marveled at God’s perfect timing and how the scholarship motivated him to keep going. “Receiving a scholarship is so meaningful,” he says, “because it shows you that someone out there cares about you.”

Senior Jack Flitter directs a student film that debuted at the Fox Film Festival.

Jack, who will marry his college sweetheart this summer, is excited about the future and grateful for the financial support that made graduating in four years possible. “I really feel like the scholarship was about more than furthering my education but about investing in my faith and my ability to build community and a life after school,” he says.

Stories from scholarship recipients like Jack have inspired Christine to develop the scholarship into a self-funding resource for cinematic arts students. This year, she rallied friends and family to help turn the scholarship into an endowed fund, allowing it to grow indefinitely. Her ambitious goal to raise over $100,000 through collective gifts and a designated estate contribution will take time, but it will also ensure that Tim’s legacy of helping others will endure long after they’re both gone.