Another very special person

Last week I introduced you to my FIL on what would have been his 95th birthday.  

Today I want to introduce you to my most favourite man growing up on this, what would have been his 85th birthday.  Way back on September 20, 1935 my Oma Winkel gave birth to identical twin boys - Gerard and John.  Gerard, Gerry as everyone called him, is my Dad and John was my most favourite Uncle (I think just because he looked just like my dad)  

This photo was taken on my parents 25th anniversary (I think).  The one in the dark suit is my Uncle John and the one in the light suit is my dad.  

 My dad was always a very special person to me.  We had a cool connection.  My dad knew how to read me and whenever something was wrong with me, he just knew it.  He was someone who was always there for me as my protector. 

My dad was a very hard worker for our family.  As I grew up, I always knew my dad as a drywaller, a mudder and taper.  Back when I was very young my Dad was sent up to Houston B.C. to do some drywall work in the brand new mall that was being built there.  He stayed in the Houston Hotel.  As my dad was working there, he had fallen and injured himself.  Even though he was injured he managed to drive himself home again. (I may not have to story 100% right but this is how I recall it as a child)  At one point in my life as well, my Dad had injured his back and was in the hospital following surgery. It seemed like he was in there for days on end.  In the end, he recovered and mainly only felt pains when the weather was cold.

My Dad was a jack of all trades.  Like my Father in Law, my Dad also played the part of Sinterklaas in December.

 Our church always had a Christmas banquet and Sinterklaas came to visit and give all the children attending a small gift.  The little girl sitting with her back to us is my younger sister Angela.

 My dad did not limit his Sinterklaas position to just the Christmas dinner.  He was working in The Netherlands back in the 1980's and in this above picture he dressed up and visited a few homes of friends coming as Sinterklaas. 

With time he progressed from being Sinterklaas to being Santa Clause for the daycare I worked at.  Here he is with my Mom taking her turn to sit on his lap.  He was so much fun. 

         
 

Just a few pictures of my Dad being goofy. My dad knew how to have fun.  My sisters blessed my Dad with 4 grandsons.  Each of them had two sons.  My younger sister lived down in the US so my Dad did not get to see Chris and Andrew as much as he would have liked to but they made a lot of effort to come up to Canada when they could and my parents would go to where they lived when they could. (They lived in many places, from Hawaii to California to Washington)  It was always a delight for my Dad to have the "boys" around as he never had sons and now was his chance to have "sons"!  Opa always took the time to build things with his grandsons and took an interest in the things they were doing.

I was married a little later in life so that meant my children were the youngest as all my nephews were now in their teens ranging from 12 - 17.  On September 20, 1997 at 3:20 a.m. my husband and I were blessed with a beautiful son - Zachariah David!  Born on Opa's 62nd birthday.  I was so excited to call my Dad in those wee hours of the morning to announce to him that I have the greatest present of all for his birthday - A Grandson! 

Opa could not wait to meet him, so a week after his birth he drove up to Houston BC where we were living and got to meet him for the first time.  Zach and Opa were just the best of buddies.  I have some priceless videos of Zach just after he learned to walk, walking all over our little apartment chatting on the phone with Opa.  He would chat and chat and Opa would chat right back at him in the same language.  They would hold long conversations and Zach would "show" Opa all sorts of things in his conversations.  

When Zach was not quite two yet, I needed to be medi-vacked from Smithers to Vancouver.  I was pregnant with twins at the time and at 35 weeks they decided it was time to try and make an appearance however the hospital up north could not handle a twin preemie birth so they sent me down to Vancouver.  David was busy teaching and was not sure what to do with Zach so my parents offered to take him for as long as we needed them to.  David drove Zach all the way down to the lower mainland and there he got to hang out with Opa.  He had the time of his life!  Opa taught him how to hammer nails.  He had a string of nail gun nails and a huge stump and went at it.  Zach was always "Zach-a-man" to Opa.  

Zach loved it when Opa would come over.  They would have heart to heart conversations and often you could see Opa and Zach "Pwaising de Yord" together.  Zach would raise his hands to the sky like Opa and just call out "Pwaise de Yord!"  Opa taught Zach a lot about Jesus and how to be a missionary in his own neighbourhood/school.  

Little did Zach know, but there was someone else that looked just like Opa!  Upon their first meeting he was very unsure about this man that looked almost like his Opa.  He sounded like Opa, he laughed like Opa but Zach knew he was not Opa. 

Each year on their birthday, Opa would come over and they would celebrate together.  Never did a year go by, that Opa did not smash Zach's face into their shared cake.

Today, September 20 we will celebrate Zach and we will remember all the fun times we had with Opa over the years.  I feel so fortunate that my kids at least had Opa in their lives long enough for them to remember him and have stories about him. 

My Dad passed away July 15, 2006.  Zach delivered the eulogy which was priceless.  Naomi was going to sing a song but then later changed her mind. 

My dad's final earthy resting place is at The Old  St john's Shaughnessy Anglican and my little angel Josiah's ashes were buried with his.  

I love you Dad - to the moon and back!

 

I'd like to introduce you to...

Wiebrand Stuive - He is the father to my husband David, the Opa to my kids and my Father-in-law.  Dad Stuive was born 95 years ago today, September 13th 1925, in The Netherlands.  Bill, as he was known by passed away into the arms of Jesus in August of 2012.  Shortly after the above photo was taken in the Netherlands, he suffered a stroke which left him unable to do much.  Bill has quite a history though and that's what I want to share with you all today.

 Years ago we were blessed with this book.  Inside it was a remarkable memory that Bill had shared.  I thought that today would be just the most appropriate time to share this memory with you all.  What I am writing below was written by my FIL (Father in law) so here I am giving him the credit for what he has written.  Sit back and be amazed like I was when I first read it.

A NARROW ESCAPE by Bill Stuive

 In the fall of 1944 I was delivering letters for people in hiding.  The Germans would censor the mail, so I collected the duikers' letters to their families, hid then in my bike frame and went to post them in a village across the border.  This way the letters would be coming from German, and they would not be censored.  In general I didn't know anything about the letter writers, some of them may even not have been living at the addresses I went to.  The less you knew the better, in case you were arrested.  However, there was one exception: an older cousin of mine was hiding together with a Jewish boy at my uncle's house, but the situation had become so tense that they had to spend their nights in the pulpit of a church.  You never knew when the soldiers would come and close off the street, and then go from house to house, from hiding place to hiding place.

In February of 1945 a plane was shot down close to my uncle's home, bringing and increased amount of German soldiers to the area.  A new hiding address had to be found, first and for all the Jewish boy.  It took several days, but finally it was arranged that my cousin and I would bring the boy to an address in my hometown Musselkanaal, and that my cousin would come and stay with my parents.  Everything seemed to be running smoothly.  We had dropped the boy off and were on our way back, and things would have been fine had we not run into a roadblock, where a collaborator recognized my cousin and knew he should be working in Germany.  I guess Germans wanted to be sure that dodging the Arbeitseinsatz was my cousins only offence, and we were both transported to SD headquarters in Groningenstad for further questioning.  My cousin knew he was in big trouble and calculated he'd better try to get rid of his false ID card, for he feared that it would not stand anymore careful inspection at the SD offices.  He somehow managed to tear the card up and let it fly in the wind piece by piece from the back of the open army truck.

 I'm still convinced we have been bloody lucky.  At our arrival at the feared "SD Hell" the Dutch collaborator who had taken is there as a German officer what he needed to do with us. "Shoot them!" was the answer.  Since that afternoon I know how it feels to have your heart pounding in your throat and to see the room turning and turning.

It was not to be; we might now have been important enough.  I just do not know.  We were jailed and later put to work on the defense systems the increasingly nervous Germans were putting up during those last months of the war.  In April 1945 we were liberated by the Canadians.

This is a British leaflet "De Wervelwind" for occupied Netherlands.  A range of about 22 of these booklets was airdropped.  For the Dutch these were one of the very few ways to get information about the war.  Many of the articles in the "Whirlwind" were reproduced in illegal newspapers and spread by the resistance. 

So there you have it!  The excerpt from the book that my FIL contributed to.  I have known my FIL now for just over 24 years.  That first meeting at the airport was a memorable one.  I had traveled to Ontario with what was then my fiance, David.  I was to meet his parents for the first time before our wedding that following winter.  We grabbed out suitcases off the carousel and were off on that hour long drive to Winona where they lived.  It was when we were unloading the suitcases that I discovered we had taken the wrong suitcase for me and I had someone else's stuff.  Mr. Stuive, as I called him at the time, called to the airport and found out that my suitcase was still there and that I needed to come and exchange suitcases right away.  On our way back to the airport his van broke down on the freeway leaving us stranded.  A kind stranger stopped and took David and I back to the airport where we could exchange the suitcase, but we had to now wait to come all the way to pick us up.  I never lived that mistake down and each time I would come to visit, he always made sure I had the right suitcase before we left the airport.

Bill was knows as "The friendliest man in Winona."  That was the small town he lived in in Ontario. Everywhere he went everyone knew him. He was involved in the Winona Men's club and each year in August he could be found at the Winona Peach festival in the WMC booth serving up peach sundaes.  When Dad would say he was just running to the bank a minute to "visit his money" he would be gone for at least an hour as he was a very sociable man and would talk with anyone and everyone.  I remember when we lived up in Houston BC, Mom and Dad Stuive came to visit us.  We would take a walk to our little local mall to get the mail.  It never failed that we would end up leaving Dad behind talking with this one or that one, meeting up again with him on our way back home.  

Dad Stuive was a very hard working man.  Now I know where David (my hubby) got his work ethics from.  Dad worked at Stelco in Hamilton Ontario.  He also owned a carpet cleaning business with his sons; he did janitorial work at the local Christian School, and at a few of the neighbouring churches as well as at the church he attended.  

Each Remembrance Day, Dad took part in ceremonies as well as took the opportunity to share his stories of being in the war to the students at local schools.  On Sinterklaas Day you could find him at the local Dutch store in Grimsby being the Sinterklaas that kids could come get their photo with.  He would also visit Shalom Manner to visit the seniors there all dressed up.  

Dad loved taking photos and would often put together slide shows for groups of people, mainly in the old age homes.  He was often invited by the Winona Horticultural club to come share slides of the flower pictures he took.  He loved taking trips to his homeland and visiting the Keukenhof in the spring time, taking beautiful photos.  He was never without his camera. 

We feel very fortunate that our kids were able to get to know Opa Stuive.  We would try to visit as often as finances would allow and they made sure they would come visit us as well.  

Happy 95th birthday in heaven Dad Stuive!  Also today would have been Mom and Dad Stuive's 71st anniversary.  Now they are celebrating together in Heaven! 

In Memory of 9-11 - September 11, 2001

It was late one Tuesday evening,

Before a mother could sit down,

To tell her only child about

The terror that hit downtown.

She looked into the eyes of her son

My, she loved him so,

She felt her heart begin to break

And the hurt begin to show.

She gathered all her strength and courage,

as her story she began to tell.

"Baby don't cry; but I'm afraid daddy

might be under a building that fell."

The boy looked back at his mother,

His eyes made not one blink.

And the mother's tears began to fall.

What would her baby think?

You see, his dad is a fireman,

And his hero from the day of his birth.

He loved his dad more than anything else

That could ever inherit this earth.

The mother's head began to drop,

Her forehead resting on palm.

She thought her son would be upset.

Instead, he was very calm.

The boy leaned over towards his mom,

And put his hand upon her head.

In her ear he began to whisper,

And this is what he said:

"Mommy please don't cry,

I knew daddy wasn't coming home.

I talked to him just a while ago,

But it wasn't on the phone.

He told me that he loved me,

And he promised we'd meet again.

He told of his new home,

And the job he was to begin."

"God is building an army,

And there are many angels needed.

That, is where daddy and the others went.

They weren't all defeated."

It was then, the mother lifted her head.

The tears streamed down her face.

And she could feel her husband's presence,

As it filled her heart with grace.

It was then she knew her son was right.

He was in God's great army now.

She also knew her son was safe,

That he'd be kept from harm somehow.

So, evildoers of the world beware.

An army is on the way.

Bolstered by new angels,

Who left the towers that day..

Their commander has never been beaten.

His power has never been matched,

And if evil thinks He was almighty before......

Well, the surface has just been scratched!

GOD BLESS AMERICA !!!!!

By Beverley Stuive