My father was a family man, a man whose whole adult life was devoted to the care of his family. He was essentially a very kind and caring man, who I remember with much love and gratitude. In this blog post, I hope to be able to convey his quiet steadfastness to his family, so that his grandchildren, and his now much larger family, may think of him with appreciation and with great affection, in the same way as I do.
While this is first and foremost a story for my family, I hope that this attempt to portray the world in which my father lived may also be of some interest to readers generally.
My father’s parents, who were known to me as “Opa” and “Oma”, were Pieter van der Kwaak and Gerritje Hendrika Walen, both of whom were born in the late 1800s, in The Netherlands. They had 2 sons, Dirk and my father, Marcus Leonardus. Max, as he was known, was born on 28 March 1912, in the village of Leiderdorp.
Two years after my father was born the First World War started. In this war (1914-1918) millions of soldiers and civilians perished. Australian and New Zealand soldiers also fought in this war and suffered terrible losses, both in Gallipoli, and in other parts of Europe. Australians still commemorate this tragic loss of life on Anzac Day. (See post 80 – ”The Girl with the Blue Hat”).
Although Holland remained neutral during this war, its impact was felt by the Dutch people, who experienced severe hunger and food rationing. Black markets flourished, and life was very difficult. The war, and the turbulent years that followed it, dominated the political and social environment of Europe during the first 20 years of my father’s life.
My father was 17 years old when the world economy completely collapsed, after the “Wall Street Crash”, heralding the start of “The Great Depression”, which lasted for about 10 years, from 1930-1939.
These early years, before my father met my mother, are somewhat of a mystery to me, and I don’t know how the two of them met each other. My sister, Margriet, remembers that Oma, our grandmother, was very protective of my father and, later, also of my mother, who had already lost her own parents.
Margriet also remembers that before my parents were married, they had to deal with the fact that they belonged to two different protestant faiths. My mother was “Gereformeerd” and my father was “Hervormd”. Our village used to have only one protestant church, but, in 1886, influenced by “ideas of Enlightenment”, a split had occurred. Conflicts developed, and the situation became so tense at that time that a detachment of 30 hussars (horsemen), 30 soldiers and 15 armed policemen were needed to surround the old church to prevent trouble.
By the time my parents were to be married the hostilities were long forgotten, but in our small village there were still two different churches, each with their own separate Christian school. While these differences did remain, they were resolved by my mother changing over to my father’s church.
My parents and my grandparents attended this church on most Sundays, sometimes for both the morning and the evening services. Their close relationship to the church, and to the church community, was very important to them all. Certainly, this supportive environment helped my father to deal with the many challenges which he faced during his life.
My parents were married on 23 May 1935, at the young ages of 23 and 21. Five years after their wedding, our country was invaded by the Germans, and the second big war in my father’s life, World War II, began. It lasted for 5 years, and it changed everything. My father was 28 years old when it started, by which time he and my mother already had 3 children. Then, in 1943, in the middle of the war, my twin sisters were born.
In the final year of this war there were severe food shortages, and we all suffered from malnutrition. Then, right at the end of it, another sister was born. Sadly, however, she lived for only 11 days. I still, to this day, have clear memories of some of the events which occurred during that period.
The war took a very heavy toll on my father. Despite the danger of being arrested during raids (“razzias”) carried out by the Germans, he was compelled to do his job, which meant being out on his bike, visiting nearly every house in the village. He would have seen, and been affected by, the people’s fear and by the misery all around him. Not having enough food to feed his own family would have been very distressing for him. I remember that one night I was crying in bed because I was hungry, and he came up to my room with a small slice of bread on a plate. I have never forgotten this because, even though I was very young, I sensed that he, himself, would probably not have eaten that night.
I’ve written previously about my father’s experiences during this war (71 – “Mad Tuesday”), including about the raids which were carried out in our village by German soldiers, and about his hiding places which he used to avoid being arrested. Following the war, my parents had 3 more children, and by the time my father was 33 years old, they had 8.
For many years my father worked for a health insurance fund, his role being to recruit new members, to collect contributions from already signed up members and to look after the administration. During the war the system did change, but the money still had to be collected from the villagers, and from the surrounding farms. He had to go out and do this every day, even when it rained or snowed or was icy.
Thankfully, however, despite these stresses during the war, the strength of the relationships within our family helped us to deal with the fear and the hardships.
My father had a close relationship with his own parents. They lived next door to us and were very supportive. A low iron fence in the front garden defined the border between our two houses. On Sunday mornings, after having attended church, my grandparents would join us in our front loungeroom. Opa and my father would often smoke a cigar and have a glass of jenever (Dutch gin) before lunch. A few years ago, I wrote about my grandfather, and about his importance to us as a family (54 – “Opa Piet”). Opa died in January 1960, in the same month in which I arrived in Sydney, to settle permanently in Australia. He was 81 years old.
For recreation, my father supported “RCL”, the local soccer club. In my early teens I sometimes accompanied him, to watch the matches on the sporting field in our village. We knew the names of most of the players, especially the goal keepers of both the RCL I and RCL 2 teams. It was often very cold, standing there at the edge of the field, but, at half-time, I was usually allowed to get my favourite chocolate flavoured drink from the stall, and an almond paste cookie (“gevulde koek”), which made it all worthwhile!
In our garden, in the shed there, my father had several cages which housed his “prized” rabbits. I remember the “Flemish giants” (“Vlaamse Reuzen”), beautiful large animals, and there were many others. I sometimes helped to clean out the cages. In summer they were fed freshly cut grass, which my father had cut with a scythe (“zeis”), a large dangerous looking implement, from the sides of country roads. The blades had to be regularly sharpened by him with special stones. He also kept chickens and pigeons from time to time. The pigeons became quite important at one stage. They were “homing” birds, and I can still see him standing in the backyard whistling and looking for them.
In the evenings we would sometimes listen, as a family, to the radio. One day each week, we listened to an audio play (a “hoorspel”), featuring a detective and his wife, who were trying to solve a crime or a mystery. All of us, including my father, sat close to the radio and became very absorbed in the story as it developed. We recognised the voice of the detective (I think his name in the play was “Paul Vlaanderen”) and the voice of his wife (“Ina”) and we held our breath, and no one talked when we heard the creepy sounds, which created the suspenseful atmosphere. We all loved it! On Tuesday nights we listened to a regular variety program, full of fun and entertainment, with famous comedians.
Once a week, all of us children had a bath in a big zinc tub, which was placed in the middle of the kitchen. This was 80 years ago, and we did not yet have a shower or a proper bathroom. Two big pans were filled with water and heated on the gas stove. One after the other, we climbed into, or were lifted into, the hot tub, and then we were washed by “Papa”. “Mama” dried us, and clean underwear was ready for us to put on. It must have been exhausting for them to lift us all in and out of the tub! To have a shower himself, my father had to go to the communal bathhouse, which was miles away in Leiden.
There was always plenty of work for my father to do. In winter and in autumn, he would wake early to start the pot stove (kachel) with newspaper and with small pieces of wood, and then he would gradually add the coal. Next to the stove was the coal container, which he brought up every day from the coal-shed. The burning coal would produce a lot of ash, and the stove had to be stirred with a poker and cleaned out frequently. This pot stove was the only heating in our two-storey house.
Our dad always polished our shoes and took us to the barber for our haircuts, and also to swimming lessons in spring, and to the clogmaker in summer, to have new clogs fitted. He also took us to the dentist and to anywhere else we needed to go. The swimming lessons took place early in the morning in the open-air swimming pool, “De Zijl”. The water was always cold and, sometimes, freezing cold!
Most of the travel away from our home was done on his and our bicycles, because we did not own a car. Looking after the bikes was another recurring job for him. He repaired them when the chains came off or when we had a flat tyre, which happened regularly. He always checked the tyre pressure and, with a special hand-pump, added air when required. Our bikes were very basic. They did not have any gears or brakes. To stop you pushed the pedals backwards. To ride these bikes without gears, against the strong wind in Holland, was tiring and difficult.
Our main meal was in the middle of the day. On school days, we all came back home from school for this, and our father came home too. Prayers were said by him, before and after each meal, and he often read us a small passage from the Bible. Our food was simple. I remember that when I was young, it always (except during the war years) included vegetables and boiled potatoes. Meat was usually far too expensive, but I remember that we did have meat rissoles (“gehaktballen”), probably once a week. Even when there was no meat, there was always gravy (“jus”), ladled liberally over the vegetables and potatoes. Sometimes, we were lucky and had fried potatoes instead of boiled ones. Fried chicken or fried rabbit only appeared at special festive occasions. Very occasionally, we had fried fish, usually flounder.
Each summer we had long school holidays, but we never travelled far from home. It was too expensive, and just not possible for our large family. But we had a lot of fun when we made daytrips. I don’t think that my father ever took time off for longer than a single day, when I was young.
There were many special family days during the year. All birthdays were celebrated, and with 8 children there were many of these. This meant presents for us children. The “Saint Nicholas” feast was very special (see “60. Sint Nikolaas”) and Christmas and Easter were celebrated with church attendances. All of these family occasions and rituals were important to us, and they strengthened us as a family.
There is so much more that I could write about my father’s life when I was still living at home. However, when my father was in his early forties, I joined the merchant navy and, thereafter, the army, for nearly 2 years of National Service. Not long after that, I migrated to Australia, thereby losing daily contact with him during the next 30 years of his life.
Sadly, my father never visited Australia, but there were many occasions when I felt very close to him, despite the distance. When Mark was born, in 1964, he “was as proud as a peacock” to learn that “Mark Lennard” had been named after him. He immediately asked for a photograph, so that he could carry it with him wherever he went. All the neighbours were offered the traditional Dutch rusks (beschuit), to celebrate the birth of his grandson.
My sister, Margriet, has told me that when our mother was visiting another daughter, Ria, in Canada, she, in our mother’s absence, looked after my father for six weeks. He was still working fulltime then. Margriet, however, realised that he was ill and was not coping well, so she decided to contact his manager about her concerns. The result of this was, thankfully, that our father was found to be eligible for early retirement and for permanent financial support, under the Dutch Sickness Benefits Act (Ziektewet). From that point on, according to Margriet, his life became less stressful, and he and my mother were able to enjoy some more relaxed and happier years together.
Sue and I were able to visit him in Holland on a number of occasions and Sue told me that she had truly loved my dad, that, “he was always so kind to me”.
My mother passed away, aged 71 years, in 1985. A year later, my father, who had adored her and who now greatly missed her, also died. He passed away peacefully, surrounded by three daughters and two sons, as well as his daughter-in-law, Nel, and my daughter, Michelle. He was 74 years old. Afterwards, Michelle sent me a 7-page letter (which I still have), with a moving tribute to her grandfather. I treasure that letter!
Sadly, I was not present at my father’s funeral, but my younger brother, Max, spoke movingly on behalf of the family. A close friend also addressed those attending the service, and he told them that he and his wife had never met anyone in their lives who was as proud of his children and grandchildren as my father had been. “He loved you so incredibly much and he always said that his children were the flowers which his wife had given to him”.
My father was a “family man”. His legacy was his family, a very close and strong family.
O.P.
P.S. If you enjoyed this story and would like to receive an email every other Sunday with new stories, please fill in your details on the Join Us page. On Sunday, 1 February, in a post titled “Kyalami Ranch”, we visit South Africa.