Johannes Groen
March 22,1913--December22,1958
Groen Genealogy
|
A Few Groen Stories.
The name "Groen" does not sound like a Frisian name to many. Nevertheless, the family lived in
Friesland for quite a few generations. During the time of Napoleon, everyone who did not yet have a last name was commanded to get one. About 17 or so heads of households chose the name Groen.
Although Grandfather Ale Groen was born in Scharnegoutum, he lived in Sneek most if not all of his life. There were many other "Groens" in that general area, in places like Scharnegoutum and other villages.
If you think of the way the average Frisian person looks, than it will likely strike you that dad and his brothers and sister did not look like that. Dad's brothers were tall, dark, not blond and thin. Dad was short, stocky and bald. Ale Groen was a very short. From the time I remember him, he always rode a "woman's" style bicycle. It was too difficult for him to get on a man's bike.
Oma Trijntje Groen-Beetstra passed away in 1943. I really do not have any memories of her. When I visited Grandpa's place, the woman I remember there was his housekeeper, Jufrouw Gre van Alberda. I met her later in Grand Rapids, when she was visiting there.
As a little boy, I enjoyed visiting at Opa's place, even though I remember him being very strict. There were several sets of rules. Opa was a devout Christian, member of the Christian Reformed kerk in Sneek. But what I noticed more was all the protocol that went along with being Grandfather being "upwardly mobile." There were some things that people of a certain class did and did not do. As a little boy, I observed all those things, without understanding very well what all that fuss was all about.
When I went for a walk with Opa, I had to be certain to keep him on my right. He would be very upset if I forgot that.
When I went up the stairs at Opa's house, I had to walk on the sides of the carpet, not the middle, because the carpet had to wear evenly. If the postman brought mail for Opa, it had better be addressed to the "weledelwaarde heer," (suffice it to say this is a truly pretentious honorific). If it didn't have that, Opa was unlikely to open it.
When Opa went to work, he took with him a number of cigars to give to people with whom he would have appointments. The more important the person, the more expensive the cigar. He used to pick them out quite intentionally.
Johannes Groen was the third child of Ale Groen Czn, and Trijntje Beestra. (The Czn indicates that Opa’s father's name was Comelis.) The family made their home in Sneek, Friesland. Opa Groen worked all of his life for Lankhorst Touwfabrieken. He started there in his early teens, and worked his way up to be the president of the company.
The family Groen was well-to-do by the standards of their time. Opa Ale had a very sharp business sense, apparently. He represented his company on a number of business trips. His contribution and acumen were acknowledged when the Dutch Queen awarded him the ribbon and gold medal of'The Ridder van de Orde Oranje Nassau." I have that little orange ribbon with the medal.
World War II reduced Opa's means substantially. However, before that, the family used to go for vacations in Switzerland. To get there, Opa used to hire a couple of limos to transport the family!
Dad used to visit Opa Groen every Saturday after his work in the bakeshop was done. He'd get on his bike, rain or shine. If the weather was really bad on Saturday, he wouldn't go, and that would be the occasion for him to go on Sunday. By the time I was about 9 or 10, I would go with dad. For this we borrowed a child's bike from one of the neighbour's. I didn't have a bike of my own until I was perhaps 10. One day Oom Wytze came to visit us in Heeg, and proudly announced that he had something for me. Wow! A bike! It was used, and it was too big, but it was my bike! To make it possible for me to ride the bike, they put wooden blocks on the pedals, and so I had my bike.
Opa Groen used to buy me books. I still have a few of those.
A bit more about the family of Opa Groen might be interesting. Since Opa was a business man, his ideal for his boys was that they would be business men, too, whether it suited them or not. Oom
Cornelis and Tante Baukje had a little store in Ee by Dokkum. Oom Cornelis (Kees) used to go from farm to farm with his Ford A truck, selling things a farmer might need. I went visiting with them from time to time, and remember Oom Kees always being in a hurry, and that meals had to be exactly on time, or we would be upset.
Oom Wytze had taken a program to be a butcher, but spent most of his life selling insurance, while Tante Annie taught school for many years. They had a car already in the late 1940's, a little Fiat, with a water cooled engine in the trunk. They had no children of their own, and enjoyed spoiling us. From time to time Oom Wytze picked me up and would take me to Sneek, and I went on his rounds with him. He had his favourite watering holes, and would order a strong Shirley Temple for the young man. When I was a student in Grand Rapids, Oom Wytze wrote me that I should send my measurements for a new suit, and his tailor would make it for me. Sure enough, in due time the suite arrived. I wore it for a long time. He also from time to time sent me Bible commentaries, when he knew I was studying to be a pastor.
In 1982 I visited the Netherlands and spent some time with Oom Wytze and Tante Annie in Sneek, and we went for some sightseeing trips in Friesland. They never went very away. Wytze used to say: "If I can't see the shadow of the Waterpoort, I am too far away."
Tante Tinie was a school teacher. She taught things like needle work and crafts at a girl's school, and later in Amersfoort. To the deep chagrin of the Groen family, she went with a married man, whom she eventually married. To try to cool this relationship, she spent a few years in Canada in the early fifties. She dated a few fellows here during that time, but her heart was in Holland, and by mid fifties she returned there. She made some visits here later. I visited her in Soest once by myself and later Barbara and I visited with her. She was a very anxious person, but very hospitable to us.
When I was perhaps 8 years old or so, I visited with Oom Richard and Tante Leny in Zwammerdam, where he was in the cheese business. Oom Richard may have been the black sheep of this family.
Oom Jelle and Tante Aaf moved to Canada not long after our family did, and at first lived close by, in Pontypool. Soon thereafter, they moved to Orillia, where they lived for many years, until well after Oom Jelle's retirement. We visited back and forth regularly, and they were a great support for our family, especially at the time around dad's death. Also, I lived with Oom Jelle and Tante Aaf one summer, when he got me a job a Vollan's Industries.
Oom Wim and Tante Hilda lived their entire married life in Leeuwarden. Oom Wim did his obligatory term of service in the Dutch military, for which he went to Indonesia. His experiences there wounded his spirit deeply, and he never recovered from it, it seems to me.
A little bit more about Johannes. (The name on the Canadian Citizenship Certificate is Jehan.) John went to school through grade six. From there he went to work for a baker Heins in Leeuwarden. My impression is that he found the work very demanding and unpleasant. Nevertheless, he must have worked there for more than 10 years, until he got his own bakery in Heeg. Also, somewhere along the line. Dad was in the Dutch military. Since he was left-handed, he underwent surgery to “correct” this. Needless to say, the surgery didn't work, and did him a fair amount of damage. Mostly his duties involved kitchen patrol. Apparently he peeled many bags full of potatoes.
When war broke out in Holland, one week after my birth, dad was again called up for military service. He
was engaged in this from time to time, but exactly what it all amounted to, is not clear to me. What does stand out in my mind is that many Jewish Refugees passed through our house. Some stayed only a night or two, until they found shelter elsewhere. Others stayed longer, like Karel Leviet (or Levitt), later renamed Karel Vervliet.
For both dad and mom, war-time must have been incredibly stressful. Sometimes they could not bake anything in the bakery because there was no fuel. At other times, the hired hands were not good workers. So the business went down-hill. The Netherlands soon capitulated to the Germans. The Dutch still used horses as their main means of military transport. One picture shows dad on a horse. The
Germans were completely mechanized, with tanks and bombers, etc. They occupied the whole country, and were ruthless with people who did not comply with their orders.
Feeding the family was a huge challenge. Our diet was very poor, often, but mostly we did have something to eat.
Even after the war, the Netherlands continued to be a very poor nation for a number of years. During this time, dad decided he wanted to emigrate. May be Australia would be nice; or the US of A; any place that would have him.
Canada wanted farmers. What did dad know about fanning? Not much! So he went to a local farmer who taught him how to milk cows by hand. And so they made work of going to Canada. By early 1951, dad was told there was a job for him in the Promised Land. He could become a baker in Toronto, working for Canada Bread, so they said. They sold their bake shop in Heeg, moved into a little house up the street, and dad went off to Canada.
When he arrived in Toronto, and presented himself to Canada Bread, they had never heard of any one by his name, and needed no help, thank you very much. So, imagine dad being in Toronto, unable to speak the language, and his family is back in the old country. Eventually, he found work as a sanitary engineer for General Motors in Oshawa. That didn't last long, and then he worked as a labourer on some construction sites. During the first couple of winters, he was unemployed.
By June of 1951, the rest of the family was nevertheless on the way. We caught a boat at Hoek van Holland, and went across to Harwich, England. From there we went by train to Southampton. There, we got on board the "Georgic" and sailed for Halifax. We were part of the thousands of Dutch immigrants who landed at "Pier 21," now an historical site.
From there by train to Oshawa. We landed on June 23, 1951.
We lived for a while six miles out of Burketon, Ontario. From there we went to Pontypool, because dad got a job at Richardson's bakery. Soon the son of the boss took over the business, and closed it down to go into the Christmas Tree business. So, dad got a job in Orono at the bakery there, and we moved once again. Dad did quite a variety of jobs when he could get them. He sometimes worked nights in the bakery, and days elsewhere, for example, he worked in the tobacco fields, hoeing, topping, or picking.
Also we often trimmed Christmas trees. In the fall of 1952, dad worked for a tree farmer, cutting the Christmas trees. Later that winter he worked for the Van Dam tobacco farm, grading the dried tobacco. He would walk to work early Monday morning, and return late Saturday evening.
The family lived in a variety of houses. A little wood frame house about six miles from Burketon, and later, just up the road, in another farm house, rent free. We just had to water and feed the cows. In Pontypool we lived in one half of a United Church Manse.
During the negotiations for renting this house, the people asked how many children the Green's have. When dad told them there were six of us, they said that was too many. So dad asked: "how many of them would you like me to get rid of?" Various immigrant families moved in and out of the other half of the house, including the Langerak and Van Dijk families.
When we moved to Pontypool, the house had a woodshed and a small barn, which had probably been used for horses and their feed. One day Martin Van Dijk and Anne Jan decided to build a small fire in the bam. You will no longer find the barn behind the house, should you go visit.
In Orono, we lived in a huge, cold house directly on Main Street, across from the Orono park. The house had no central heat, no running water, and no flush toilet. It was bitterly cold in the winter time.
After a year or two in Orono, dad and mom got involved in the Christian School work in Bowmanville. We went to for volunteer labour, and mom got a job there as teacher. Dad got a job at a Bakery in Oshawa, and so we moved to 12 Prospect Street, Bowmanville. This house was the first one we lived in to have reasonable modem amenities. It had electricity, a new gas furnace, and running water. All of these were pure luxury, especially after Orono, where we had to walk quite a ways to get water for our needs.
Cars were a consternation to dad. He never learned to feel comfortable driving, and he was always somewhat awkward at it. The first car we had was a 1937 Oldsmobile. Can you imagine what a wreck that must have been? By the time we got it, it was 14 years old. Starting it was hard in the summer time, and supernatural adventure in cold weather. So dad used to drive it up on a ramp, put some sheet metal under it, and then build a fire under that, if you can picture it, to get it warmed up a bit. Even then, it often wouldn't start.
Later, we had an old Plymouth, perhaps 1947. Then, we had an old Chrysler, with fluid drive transmission, and lots of room; it came from a funeral home, where it had been used as a limo. Wipe it down with a quart of oil, and it would shine like brand new. At least this car was reliable, and we had it until about 1959 or sixty, when Peter tried to see if it would race well.
The first indication that I had that all was not well with dad came when he called me to help him at the bakeshop. That story is in the section on mom. Dad passed away from a heart attack, December 22, 958.
One other story needs to be told. On December 26, pastor A. Schaafsma phoned us to say that he and one of the deacons of the church wanted to visit that afternoon. When they came, they wanted to speak to mom and me. They informed us that the deacons had taken up a collection in the congregation, and had come up with enough money to pay off the mortgage for the house in its entirety. This was a sacrificial act of compassion and grace on behalf of that immigrant community to a family in distress. We shouldn't forget; and heaven won't.
Our parents lived through stressful times indeed. Perhaps times of poverty and war are the "normal" situation for many people, most of the time. That is the case for many now, but for us in Canada, we are pretty insulated from those realities. Sure, we see them on TV, and read about them in newspapers. But these hard times are not "normal." They have an enormous impact on people going through them.
Dad and mom Groen were in mid teen years, when the depression hit. People eked out a meagre living. In the thirties, the storm clouds of Hitler loomed on their horizon. They became parents during War time. With a sense of adventure (dad) and foreboding (mom) our parents moved to Canada in 1951. It took several years before dad had a decent job.
Making ends meet must have been very difficult. They had a still-born child, and lost a son through an accident. Looking back on it, this transition was much more difficult than they had anticipated. What went through their minds and hearts, we can only guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment