I’ve been thinking about Father’s Day for days… and all the wonderful men I know who are fathers—some of them actually have children, but I also know so many wonderful men who have no children of their own, but who’ve acted as fathers for children who had no father presence in their lives. I feel fortunate to know so many wonderful men and can only hope that my own sons will follow these examples.
Fortune has smiled on me because I’ve been very fortunate to have so many “father” figures in my life. My uncles on both sides of the family….on the Platteschorre side I have one uncle who claims he cured me of running away from my parents… I vaguely remember it even though I was very young. We were in a park in Strasbourg, Germany and didn’t like to hold my mother’s hand when we were walking, so I would wrench it free and run ahead in the crowd. This used to exasperate my parents, so my uncle said he’d take over and teach me a lesson. My Uncle Henk said that when I noticed my parents weren’t around I started to cry, and all manner of strangers were looking at me and ready to take me to the police and turn me in as a lost child. He said that when he showed himself in the crowd and I saw him that I ran to him and clung my arms around his neck. He claims that forever cured me of running away again! Ha! So he thinks!!!
Then I have another Platteschorre uncle who was always more like a big brother because of the closeness of age--- he used to tease me mercilessly when I was on board ship all those summers on the Brahms. Here they are, my father's siblings: Oom Henk on the left, Jan on the right, and Tante Fiet in the center.
On the Barendrecht side I have three uncles who were each very different from one another, and yet, somewhat the same. They’re my “married in” uncles – the spouses of my aunts, and they include a captain in the merchant marines, a publishing house executive, and an artist. With them I had great conversations about the world and life in general, and each one of them made an indelible impression on me. I loved talking about the nature of business organizations, management styles, and leadership with Jan and Ton. With Willem I used to explore Rotterdam’s flea markets and pawn over all sorts of old things. I miss each of them greatly.
Then there are my grandfathers—who were some of the best fathers anyone could ever have. From Opa Platteschorre I learned about WWII and German mythology as I rode on top of the wheel in the wheelhouse of the Brahms. This was truly a bird’s eye view of the Rhine river. From Opa Barendrecht, I learned to respect education and learning, as he was a man who completed a school diploma in night school even when he worked full time at a ship’s yard and had a wife and children to take care of. He provided me with inspiration to seek out learning and education. Shown below is Opa Barendrecht the first time he came to America to check up on his daughter.
And then, of course, there is my own father… who although he was not the easiest person in the world to get along with, was an amazing man! As a youth he refused to go along with the German soldiers when they came looking for him to join the German army. Near the end of the war, he found a farmer with a field of potatoes and through a lot of persuasion, forged paperwork, and under the cloak of darkness he, along with my grandfather, brought a barge-load of potatoes home which prevented starvation during the hunger winter of 1944.
My father was adventurous, and after 11 years in the Dutch police force decided his future lay in America. So, with $200.00 In his pocket, a limited English vocabulary, but with strong drive and ambition, a wife and two daughters, he went to seek his fortune in the “new country.”
He built his own house, a 40 foot sailboat, and sailed down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico. When he saw corruption in local government, he ran for office and stirred the pot enough to clean things up. All in all, he was an amazing man!
