Holland heritage
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Anticipating a great new life in America, three young men from the Netherlands arrived in Salt Lake City in late June 1947, to pioneer the way for the rest of their family. Fourteen-year-old Bill VandeMerwe spoke little English, and his older brothers — John and Joe — spoke even less when they got off the bus. But extended family and other members of the Church watched over them.
On July 4th of that year, the three joined an Independence Day celebration at Jordan Park in the heart of Salt Lake City. Ultimately, their parents and six siblings joined them in their new country where they thrived as a family and as Latter-day Saints.
One of numerous family gatherings during this reunion season, the VandeMerwe family, including the six surviving siblings — John, Steve, Cornelia, Joe, Bill and Bea, returned to Jordan Park to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the arrival of the first three brothers. More than 60 descendents of their parents, Jan and Cornelia VandeMerwe, enjoyed getting reacquainted, eating, playing games and learning about their heritage under the hot summer sun Saturday, July 7.
As a family, the VandeMerwes are grateful that their patriarch, Jan, was impressed as he looked down from the top of a dike in Holland watching two missionaries trying to tell a threatening group of field workers about the Book of Mormon. The discouraged missionaries later taught him the gospel and he was baptized. Though she lived in a different city, his future wife was baptized the same month after her family was taught by a young missionary named LeGrand Richards.
During a Church News interview, Bill VandeMerwe said from his parents' union has come a faithful posterity resulting in 50 missionaries. He returned to serve in the Netherlands after putting in time with the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He and his wife, Janice, have also served twice in the Netherlands as senior missionaries.
At the reunion, he beamed as he watched his "American" relatives enjoying their association in and around the park bowery.
Thinking back on his childhood, he said World War II was his most traumatic memory. Besides facing starvation because of food shortages in his homeland, Bill said he and his family lived close enough to Rotterdam to see and hear the devastation of the bombing of that city which destroyed their Church building.
He and his family appreciated the Americans for battling to liberate them and it made a lasting impression. Acknowledging there are good ones and bad ones, Bill said he still believes that, overall, "Americans are the best people in the world." Because of that, he was "so excited to come to America" as a teenager.
At home during the war, he witnessed the kindness his mother showed towards a German soldier the family was forced to house for a night. He said she even shared with the ill young enemy a spoonful of precious cough syrup.
Another encounter with a young German soldier Bill recorded in his journal. It was during the German occupation of the Netherlands that the soldier attended fast meeting in the VandeMerwe family's branch.
"He stood up and bore his testimony in German," Bill wrote. "I could not understand any of it because I did not know German. But I can well remember the sweet spirit emanating from him. After the meeting someone who understood German told us what he had said. It was mostly a typical LDS testimony, but what impressed me most was his statement about how much he hated the war."
During the family reunion, John and Bill both spoke about arriving in America. They sailed from Europe on a freighter and arrived in New York harbor too late in the day to land. Bill said as he looked out over Manhattan from the ship he was excited and happy to have arrived. John, 21 years old at the time, said, "As I looked at the skyscrapers and the busy streets, I was scared to death," because of the responsibility of taking care of his two younger brothers in this big, busy new land. But, they said, they were met at the dock by a Church member who was expecting them, put them up for the night and got them on the bus for Utah the next day.
Though they still speak with a Dutch accent, the brothers and their siblings reveled in their American surroundings as they watched their posterity intermingling at the park and enjoyed what has evolved from their own challenges, trials and faithfulness over six decades.
E-mail to: ghill@desnews.com
