Bernie and Dina Klompmaker Presentation (04/24/2004)

Hallo everyone,

As you heard my name is Bernie Klompmaker, or as my Parents called me, Berend. I was named after my Grandpa, who was named after his Grandpa. This is a tradition our generation has abandoned.

When Harvey Pastunink approached me to give this talk, I asked him for guidelines. Part of his Answer was "I hear you have a 50th wedding anniversary coming up, that should give you lots to talk about." Little did I know then what an impression such an event can make. The kindness of people in words, cards, letters, E-mails, flowers, gifts and visits can pull on your heartstrings.

From Laar, county of Bentheim, Germany to Holland, Michigan. Or as our secretary called it Immigration- honeymoon. There are many ways we can describe the events of our life. We even joke "we are still on our honeymoon."

Now if I would ask you to tell us of the biggest decision of your life you could probably do so in a few sentences. Something like, we wanted to get married, did not have a good way to support our self and the industrial areas of Germany did not have any churches of the denomination we belonged to, so we immigrated, all true, but it does not say anything about what precedes such a decision. Let me take you back to our childhood.

My wife Dina and I were both born in the county of Bentheim, a little piece of land in northwest Germany. It is about sixty miles south of the North sea on the border of the Netherlands. It consists of 378 square miles of mostly flat land, with a few hilly areas. With a population of just over 129,000. We were born in what is now called the village of Laar consisting of five independent entities in horse and buggy time when we grew up. We grew up on farms. Not farms with big tractors, hundreds cows, pigs or acres of corn. But self supporting family farms. Where horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, geese, chicken etc were raised, a garden and orchard maintained in quantities that could be handled by a few people. Self supporting, independent, and yet tied to a community by customs. Regulations for what to do at birth, marriage, sickness and death. Rules that limited your action but also gave security. One rule was, the oldest son inherits the farm. This meant he would work for his father until his father was old. He had to help his father to give his siblings a start in life, support his parents in their old age and then turn the farm over to the next generation. A good system if relationships were right otherwise it would be like one farmer said "I was always the hired help, first for my father, than for my son." A hard, disciplined, secure life, passed on from generation to generation. John and Swenna Harger have a carving that describes it this way - a farmer walking behind his plow, pulled by two horses and underneath the words "was du ererbt von deinen Vaetern hast, erwirb es um es zu besitzen." In our language‚ "what you inherited from your fathers earn it to possess it."

I was born as the second of eleven children. Our oldest brother was killed as a teenager. As a sixteen year old I decided to stay on the farm with my folks. A few years later attending an agricultural school I learned that my mind worked just as good as that of others, maybe even better than average and doubt about a career in farming was born. A desire for teaching surfaced, but without financial means in the aftermath of World War II, all my efforts were fruitless. There was little industry in our area. For other jobs and positions older refugees or displaced persons had first choice. So I stayed on the farm.

Some young people from our area immigrated. Among them three siblings from our church. When they were established in Canada their parents decided to follow with two younger children. On a Sunday afternoon we said goodbye to them. Later sitting at the table waiting for supper my brother and I were discussing possibilities of going to Canada. Mom was at the stove. With an "O, boys" she fainted. You can understand immigration was not mentioned in her presence for quite a while. Among friends it was an active subject. One day Mom started talking about writing to uncle Fred. Now uncle Fred [the wooden shoemaker of Holland for many years] was Mom's cousin married to Dads sister Grace, moved to Holland, Michigan in 1923. Dad's sister Dina married to Albert Spykman moved here in 1924. So Holland was not as foreign to us as many places.

When I was three years old Uncle Fred and Aunt Grace visited us. We children received each a toy animal, whose head moved up and down when touched. We could not play with them. Their place was on top of a wardrobe, out of reach. We could only dream about a nice place where you could play with nice toys like that, instead of brick and pieces of wood leftovers from the house our parents had built. When I was ten uncle Spykman visited us. On his return trip he took our Grandparents along. Grandpa had been a soldier during W.W.I.

Grandma who couldn't even ride a bike, had never left the district until then. After their return, Grandpa, a good story teller, could always find a captive audience for a talk about the big boats, the trip by car through tunnels, over mountains, life in the city where gardening was a hobby and all supplies were bought in a store. Our Grandparents lived with us. Grandma had a picture on her dresser. She told us about her cousin Jenny who was married to Rev. Ahuis of Fremont Michigan. After our Grandparents visit we received the Wachter a church paper written in Dutch, printed in Grand Rapids Michigan. Postduiven [Homing pigeon] was my favorite article. Dina's Grandma had two brothers and two sisters who moved to Lucas, Michigan. Only one was living when we came here. So Dina's father had many cousins here, although they did not know each other, there was no correspondence.

Uncle Fred and Aunt Grace made another visit. Uncle took me aside to show me the impossibility of staying on the farm which I did not see at that time.

I gave you all these examples to show you Holland, Michigan was not unknown to us. Maybe we would have forgotten it existed but Dina and I started serious talk about marriage.

The idea of living on a farm that housed three generations and my youngest brother only five years of age had its negatives. Thinking of raising a fourth generation under these conditions was not appealing. Family and friends got involved with suggestions and ideas.

I finally wrote a letter to uncle Fred. He responded within a few days with only encouragement and promises. The way this letter was written convinced Dina and me we had to go. My parents tried to discourage us, but gave in. Dina's parents made more objections. Who can blame them? It is not easy to see your children go into the unknown. A serious talk with my future mother-in-law opened the way. Then came friends with "I could never do that" well who could? Unless the Lord was leading. So we started our preparations.

It was August 1953. On the 28th we celebrated our engagement. Uncle Spykman became our sponsor. By April, 1954, all plans and papers were ready. Our wedding took place on April 19, 1954. Now I quote a few words freely translated from a poem my mother wrote and read at our wedding. I am sorry I could not make them rhyme. "A wedding day, a day of gladness when many longings are fulfilled, but a parent's heart feels a mixture of wistfulness and gladness today, because the time comes closer, when we shake hands in farewell and you go for always to a distant land, parents and siblings feel you leave us, from our beautiful children circle another blossom is detached, the gap is getting bigger. Before the flower was really open the nicest part was removed, the Lord almighty allowed it, our Jan we miss him deeply. But I hope, that what made him happy may be your comfort too."

Some of the last words of Jan. "I love you, O Lord my strength. The Lord is my rock my fortress and my deliverer."

Our wedding took place on April 19, 1954. Followed by a few days of final preparations and farewells. On April twenty eight we reported at the offices of the cruise line we had engaged to carry us across the ocean. It was located in Bremen. To our surprise my brother-in-law and sister joined us to spend the night in the same hotel. The next day we went by train to Bremerhaven to the boat. They followed so we could spend the day together. We left our homeland late that afternoon. Someone on board played "nun ade du mein lieb Heimatland" - "now fare well my dear homeland, fare well" a moment for all times imbedded in our memory.

But we were on our honeymoon, we had free time to talk to the passengers of our boat, the Gripsholm. There was entertainment and plenty of food on board. We stopped in England and France before heading out into the ocean. On the second day we were met by a storm that stayed with us until we approached the coast of Canada. Dina was so seasick she didn't care for anything. Our passage was uncomfortable to say the least. Early one morning I was sitting on B-deck. I saw nothing but sky when the boat went down a wave and nothing but walls of water on the upstroke. At breakfast that morning only four people showed out of 936 passengers on board. What a honeymoon! Dina felt miserable for a week, but recovered as soon as we approached land.

Our arrival in New York was met with disappointment. Train tickets for our journey to Michigan, purchased by Uncle Fred had not arrived. We found a man who spoke German and was willing to investigate. He returned shortly with the information tickets had been purchased but send to a different location. He promised to have them delivered. While we were waiting [for more than an hour] customs officials searched our belongings and verified our papers. By the time our tickets arrived we were the only new arrivals left at customs. Dockworkers were called to remove our trunks, doors were closed and we were left standing on the sidewalk in New York City. If the Lord would not have infused in us the thought he was leading it would have been time for panic. A man approached us pointing at his truck. Although I could not read or understand the writing on his truck, I trusted that he was a mover. So, we let him load our trunks, showing him Uncle Fred's address for delivery. Hailing a taxi, we pointed to our train tickets when the driver did not respond to either German or Dutch. When we arrived at the depot I gave him a tip, which made him remember he knew some German. Dina was left to watch our suitcases while he introduced me to a German-speaking woman in the railroad office. This good woman's first concern was our trunks. Showing her the stubs I had received, we walked three blocks to the address to find out everything was fine. Back at the depot she helped me send a telegram to uncle Fred and changed our departure time so we could leave immediately for our eighteen hour train ride to Kalamazoo, Michigan. At suppertime we had another new experience, Dina had never seen an African American and didn't know if she would eat. Uncle Fred was not at the depot to meet us when we arrived. After a short wait we decided to find some breakfast. A stroll in the immediate vicinity convinced us by the conditions we met, that we were not really terribly hungry. So we returned to the depot, where we shortly received a telephone call from uncle Fred. He had received our telegram and also a telegram from the organization to oversee our travel arrangements. But the telegrams conflicted in reporting our arrival time by a six hour margin. So he decided to call before picking us up. Approximately one hour later he arrived to transport us to his home in Holland.

Uncle Fred and Aunt Grace were very good to us. We stayed at their house for almost three weeks. During this time our trunks arrived. We found and rented a small apartment. Uncle Fred lent us money to buy some furniture and found work for me at Roamer Boat, to help a Dutch speaking welder building tugboats. After we had been settled in our little apartment for a while Dina found work cleaning luxury boats at Chris Craft. Several months later she had to quit because of the beginning of a difficult pregnancy. Uncle Fred tried to impress on me it was not enough to just have a job. One night after work, I fixed an electrical problem at his house. His immediate reaction was "That could be work for you, I see what I can do." Some months later he introduced me to Ben Diekema superintendent of Buss Machine and I found myself doing electrical work on woodworking and die cast machinery. As the forty sixth employee I found myself among a mostly Dutch speaking workforce. Quite a few of the Employees had relatives or ancestors that came from the same county [Grafschaft] Bentheim in Germany, where I came from. Now we had to learn English, for you who grew up with it this seems easy but consider, we had to learn to drive on a parkway and park on a driveway, that there is no egg in eggplant and no ham in hamburger, neither does a pineapple grow on pines nor is it an apple. When the stars are out they are visible but when the lights are out they are invisible, as the man said who wrote these lines when I wind up my watch it starts, when I wind up this poem it stops.

The maintenance supervisor at Buss spoke German. We worked well together and I learned a lot from him. I also attended night school and seminars and read everything that sounded interesting. In this way I advanced my capabilities. After several years I received a promotion to design electrical and hydraulic circuitry. The company expanded and I became control engineering supervisor. I retired at age fifty nine.

We found a church home in the Christian Reformed denomination, where I was privileged to serve as Sunday school teacher, deacon and elder. We were blessed with three boys who all earned a masters degree in their profession and one daughter who became a medical doctor. Our nine healthy grandchildren are a joy in our retirement years. Dina spends her free time in art and craft classes. After the children left the house she worked in a craft store. She still enjoys crafts.

It hurt terribly to leave parents, siblings and friends, but the Lord has blessed us in our new homeland where we enjoy family and new friends. Bernie & Dina

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