Audrey Hepburn-A Personal Story
The ten Short Stories entitled Some Women I Have Known start with a personal story about Audrey Hepburn. She died way too young in 1993, but her life was such an amazing whirlwind of brilliance that she will remain an icon for many into the far distant future. She was 7 in 1936 when I was born, from a Dutch mother, Ella Baroness van Heemstra and a British father, Joseph Ruston. Audrey spoke English, Dutch and French (from their stay in Brussels, where her father worked for a while.)
Audrey 7 years old with her mother from Wikipedia.nl – Family photo.
Why write about it now, as it is twenty years ago that Audrey left us for another world? Because her disappearance keeps coming back to me. A cousin, Anne van der Laan (http://www.genealogieonline.nl/en/stamboom-smits-van-oyen/I1066.php), and I talked about the women we had met in our lives at a family reunion at the Maarten Maarten’s house in Doorn in The Netherlands in 2002, where Maarten Maarten’s Some Women I have Known stood prominently in the Library. Shaking hands, we agreed we would write our own Some Women together.
John and cousin Anne van der Laan – 2007
He asked me which woman I would write about first. I mentioned Audrey at once. Not because I had been part of her living circle, but because I had met her at a very young age as a normal girl who came to visit us, played with me, and then ten years later suddenly stood shining at the firmament, leaving me bedazzled of her beauty and charm. Was that the same girl? My whole life I remained bewildered by her inspiring personality. Anne and I started writing our stories but then Anne passed away shortly after we took the above picture. Project down. I took it back up only a few years ago.
The Audrey story starts how I met her when I was 7, in 1943, during World War II. She and her mother, then divorced, fled to Holland from England in 1939 when the war broke out, thinking Holland would remain neutral as it did during World War I (1914-18). It turned out different, when Nazi Germany invaded Holland in May in 1940, bombing Rotterdam to smithereens. I was just four and a half, but still remember seeing from our backyard the bomb explosions clouding over Schiphol airport. Her mother, two step brothers, Alexander and Ian Quarles van Ufford from an earlier marriage, and Audrey, stayed with her grandfather, Arnoud Baron van Heemstra, in Velp, a residential suburb of Arnhem in the center of Holland. Arnoud was previously mayor of Arnhem (1910-1920) and thereafter Governor of Suriname (1920-1928), then still a Dutch colony (“Dutch Guyana”, in the Caribbean).
Arnoud knew my grandparents van Coehoorn van Sminia through family (linked with the van Limburg Stirums), and of course, through local life. He took Audrey and her mother one day to see them in the small village where they lived, about ten miles from Velp, when I was there on vacation. The Germans must have given them passage or visiting was still allowed during the day, I don’t know. It was 1943 and Audrey must have looked like this, as I remember:
Young Audrey at thirteen – Wikipedia.nl, probably a family photo
The family suffered enormously from the harsh living circumstances enforced on them by the Nazis, but Audrey’s mother Ella saw to it that Audrey could take ballet dancing lessons, Audrey’s dream of becoming a ballerina, at the Arnhem Conservatory. My personal story starts there.
Photo from Wikipedia.nl, in 1944, a family photo.
Would Audrey have become as famous had she pursued her dream to be a ballerina? I am sure she saw the ballet movie The Red Shoes that reached the theaters in 1948 and was widely acclaimed. Perhaps she would have liked to act the ballerina role of Vicky Page and if a bit older she might have done that very well, but would she have reached her pinnacle and touched us the way she did in the much broader medium of the movies? I doubt it.
With the next blog, we will publish the short story.
OLYMPICS 2014 – WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS SPEED SKATING
Sven Kramer with his Sochi gold of the 5,000 meters in record time continues the great tradition of Dutch speed skaters, as did Jan Blokhuijsen and Jorrit Bergsma of the Netherlands who took silver and bronze. A Dutch sweep, so to say.
Ever heard of Coen de Koning? Born in 1879, he developed into a phenomenal Dutch speed skater, who became all-round world champion in Groningen (northern province of The Netherlands) in 1905, winning all four distances, including the 5000 and 10,000 meters. He won the Eleven City Skating Tour (“Elfstedentocht”, a 128 mile or some 205 kilometers event!) twice, in 1912 and 1917. The first Olympic Winter Sports were held in 1924 in Chamonix in the French Alps (an area where I loved to go skiing) but by that time Coen must have been burned out.
Why I am glowing about this? My grandfather Hector van Coehoorn van Sminia, himself a good Friesian skater like his older brother Hobbe, trainde Coen de Koning in Davos (Switzerland) in the early 1900s in his training camp. Hector also participated in the first “Elfstedentocht” of 1909 and finished 8th out of a field of 32 skaters. He continued training Coen de Koning in Davos and spurred him to participate in the 1912 Elfstedentocht, which he won. And then he won it again in 1917, after practically a solo tour, leaving all other participants and close rivals way behind. The only speed skater who ever did this twice.
My grandmother was the first who congratulated him with his second win (her husband, Hector, was still on his way on the ice…). His feet were bleeding in his skating shoes. Hector finished, too (his brother, Hobbe, gave the starting shot!), though the records show it took him six hours longer than his “pupil”. But finishing it twice is quite an achievement and he was a couple of years older. A “monster race”, de Koning called it.
Coen de Koning – Hector van Sminia – Dutch speed skaters made history.
Coen de Koning also won the Dutch championships speed skating in 1903, 1905 and 1912, and his records on the 500 and 10000 meters held for 20 years!
Hector invented his own steel skates in the 1900s, lighter and sharp as knives, to increase his speed. They were sold in the early days of speed skating glory, before the steel blades from Norway took over the market. All-steel skating blades were also developed in the USA and Canada, where speed skating started as of 1850. Hector’s skates were screwed into leather boots with strong leather soles. Harald Hagen, a Norwegian skater had already built a skate in 1885, with a steel blade supported on steel tubes also fixed underneath a specially designed boot. This design became the standard for competitive speed skating for the twentieth century and up to today.
Hector used his skates in particular for the popular “bandy sport” (“hockey on ice”, rather than “ice-hockey”) and his team from Haarlem, where he lived, became champion in Davos in 1902, beating the Davos team 6-2.
As reported in the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad of January 15th, 1902: “We saw excellent sprints by van Sminia, worthy of a speed skater, which belied the fact that he had not been on skates for a long time, due to his long stay in the East Indies”. Willy Dòlleman, the brother of Hector’s wife Marie, also played in that team. Hector’s Haarlem team played hockey in the Dutch national competition, and won the Dutch championship in 1904.
Much of these glorious facts are kept in the Sminia Archives in Leeuwarden, Friesland, in the Netherlands. It includes letters from Coen de Koning to and fro, but unfortunately the photos of those days are not very good. Some comments on Hector’s achievements were that this forgotten sportsman should be put back in the limelight, and that’s what I am doing with this blog.
The Sminia off-spring, and that includes me, lost the spirit for speed skating. You need fresh “Friesian blood” for that and a good deal of training discipline and physical strength. I was born in Amsterdam and never got very excited about speed skating because it tired me out so quickly. My grandfather taught me to skate when I was five, pushing a wooden kitchen chair over the ice, but I never gained his mastery. I remember him swaying over the ice with my grandmother at his arm, waltzing along.
But I love to watch the sport and attended many championships in Holland.
I deplore it that when we were kids we didn’t know all the things that our grandparents achieved and that we could not talk about it with them. Too much of an age gap to understand what it meant to be part of the skating champions of their time. Or of my grandfather’s horseback riding and breeding he excelled in after that, another great Friesian tradition.
So, congrats to Sven Kramer, Jan Blokhuijsen and Jorrit Bergsma, who continue the good old Dutch folklore!
Guyana The Beautiful
On these snowy winter days I’m jealous of my brother-in-law who is traveling to Georgetown to stay in the family house there for a couple of months.
As Traveling Ted has already shown in several of his blogs (http://travelingted.com/category/caribbean/), Georgetown and Guyana are full of surprises. First, the country is a real melting pot. Though there are mostly Africans and East-Indians, the population includes Portuguese, Chinese and Aboriginal Indians (Amerindians, local Indian) and many intermarry. It makes for beautiful “mixtures”. Creole and Indian cuisine is often seen together on the dining table. The setback of Guyana is its slim population (about 700,000) and lack of an industrial base. Most of its resources such as bauxite, gold, and diamonds are exported abroad by international companies.
Guyanese rum (Demerara, Bank’s XM,Eldorado etc.) is the best of the Caribbean if not of the world, no doubt about that. I tried several in neighboring Suriname, but no match. Same for the Jamaican Baccardi. Quoted from their website, “the D’Aguiar family in Guyana (Banks) has been there for over 150 years and have been making fine Guyanese rums since the 1840’s when José Gomes D’Aguiar, the founder of the company, started a rum business. Over the years the Company’s rums have been awarded many accolades, including three outstanding awards at the International Wine and Spirits Competition for its 10 year-old rum and XM VXO.” This means something. The only spirit I drink in Guyana is their fabulous rum, and we take quite a few bottles home.
Otherwise, little is manufactured right there because with a population of about 700,000 the critical mass is insufficient. The brain-drain to the USA, Canada and the UK is unstoppable, and local unemployment remains high. Guyanese are well educated and I met several of them in high places around the world. A bright lot, so, no wonder that they leave for better places to put their good minds to work.
As Traveling Ted has already shown the most important sites of Georgetown and Guyana in his blogs, I refer you to his website <http://travelingted.com>.
I copy here a few pictures I took myself during my several stays in Guyana, and while I was loading them up I wished I had taken many more. My main attraction has been the Kaietur Falls, which I consider as good as any of the 8 world wonders. And then there are the impressions of everyday life. If you plan to stay in any of the Caribbean Islands, think of carving out a side trip to Guyana, meet the friendly people in Georgetown. taste the ancient architecture of the town, and go see those falls. They are just overwhelming and better than the Niagara falls because they have not been affected by an influx of tourists: what you see is pure nature. I have shown a few pictures of the falls in my previous blog, but I add these to give a better feel of their beauty.
Some computers will enlarge the pictures if you left click on them. When this succeeds just click on the bakward arrow top left, and you will be back at the blog.
Our friendly pilot Sam
Kaietur falls seen from the airplane
Picture taken by our pilot
Kaietur with flora along the rocks and ravines
Kaietur seen over and in-between plants
Kaitur seen from flying close to it.
Our pilot admires the falls as well
With our pilot at Orin Duik (Dutch for Orin “Plunge”), less than an hour flight from Kaietur. We took a swim under the falls below
Back in Georgetown, at Stabroek market. You see similar markets in India.
Modern transport in Georgetown. Take your time.
Even donkeys do a good job.
Also in Guyana there comes an end to life. Often, the funeral procession is preceded by a loud band that plays Chopin’s funeral march.
A young attractive Guyanese girl going to work in the sunny weather
Some of the more modern residences in Georgetown. Quite pleasant.
Having lunch in Guyana is a delight. I love those puris!
Cattle Egrets populating the coconut trees
The future of Guyana waiting to be picked up from day-care. Working parents have the same problem the world over.
The World Bank office in Georgetown where I spent many a day.
Oh those lovely ladies from Guyana on a leisurely Sunday afternoon.
Bye-bye, see you next time
There are several tour organizations in Guyana. http://www.evergreenadventuresgy.com/ is one. A local airline that has been taking tourists around is http://www.roraimaairways.com/wp/. Trans Guyana Airways, also operates flights between Georgetown (Ogle Airport) and Paramaribo (Zorg en Hoop airport) in collaboration with GUM AIR from Suriname. The flight between Georgetown and Paramaribo along the coast offers a beautiful view of the physical architecture of these countries, in particular in the late afternoon with the sunlight shining over the extensive rice and sugar paddies and the outflows of the mighty Essequibo river.
A 40 year Multicultural Experience
My curiosity for long-distance enchantment and multiculturalism was born out of a famous story, Saïdjah and Adinda, written by a much-lauded Dutch author, Eduard Douwes Dekker, alias “Multatuli” (“the one who has suffered a lot”) in 1860. His book was about “Max Havelaar, The Coffee Auctions of The Dutch Trading Company”. It agitated against the abuses of Dutch colonialism in the then Dutch Indies (now Indonesia), was widely read in his days and later, reprinted many times, and turned into a Dutch movie in 1976 by film director Fons Rademakers, which got first prize at several film festivals for best foreign film.
Credit: Wikipedia NL.
Saïdjah and Adinda was chapter 17 in this long book. My elementary schoolteacher wanted me to read the story when I was 10 (1947). Its sadness, savagery and underlying beauty of love gripped me forever. As young children, Saïdjah and Adinda were destined to marry. Their friendship evolved into love, but the local colonial master confiscated Saïdjah’s buffaloes he needed for his rice field. Forced to earn a living and cash to marry Adinda, he left the area and went to work somewhere else. Their separation was heartbreaking.
I still see the picture that Adinda had shaped in my imagination: a beautiful slim girl with long black hair, bare footed and a light coffee-brown smooth skin, wide dark eyes and a brilliant smile, the dream girl in the “Dessa” (village). I fell in love with this Adinda. But when Saïdjah came back to marry her, he found her family murdered in their shantung home, and Adinda’s body tortured and ripped open. It was a cry against colonial rule. Her sad image never left my mind.
I read the story when Holland fought its colonial war during 1945-49, which led to Indonesia’s Independence. At high-school from the early fifties, I had several Indonesian friends whose families had fled to Holland during these bitter years. At that time, I learned that my grandfather, Hector van Coehoorn van Sminia, as a young man, had spent five years in the Dutch Indies in the early 1900s to set up and manage a coffee plantation with a business companion. Had he ever seen a girl like Adinda? I wonder. But he didn’t feel that was the type of life he wanted and returned to Holland to find his love and married, going back to speed-skating, horseback riding and breeding Dutch thoroughbreds.
Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to talk to him about his life in the Indies, as he died in 1946, shortly before I read Saïdjah and Adinda’s story. I also learned at that time that a great-uncle, John Paul van Limburg Stirum, had been Governor General of the Dutch Indies from 1916-1921. As a young boy, I met him several times at my grandmother’s house, and I remember him as a very impressive man.
Only when I became 16, I heard that he had been very critical of the Dutch Government for not allowing the local population more political freedom in their own decision making. He took several measures to enhance local political participation, which were later rescinded by a much less visionary Dutch regime. He died in 1948 when the colonial war was raging and I was too small to talk to him about these things.
His vision was the main reason why, in 1962, I wrote my masters thesis for political science about the renewed conflict between Holland and Indonesia regarding Western New Guinea (the Dutch side of Australian Papua Guinea, which was part of the Indonesian archipelago). Holland had kept it out of the 1949 Indonesian Independence agreements as Dutch territory.
The thesis argued against the Dutch Government’s impossible position to keep Western New Guinea (Western “Irian” for Indonesia) out of Indonesian sovereignty. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, especially Minister Luns, was not amused when they heard about my thesis during my research. A month after I completed my thesis, in August 1962, Holland was forced to sign the secession of Western New Guinea to Indonesia, under American mediation (New York Agreement, Ellsworth Bunker, diplomat under President Kennedy).
Meanwhile Adinda had found refuge in my mind. She was the driver of my economic development studies in Paris and my desire to join the World Bank. She probably was also the driver behind my inclination to find her as a life companion despite all the blondes and brunettes that complicated my life and couldn’t keep me committed, spawning deep sorrow and many tears. Ultimately I found her….in 1973 at the World Bank in Washington D.C. An East-Indian beauty from Guyana.
“Adinda come true”
The World Bank is, of course, a multicultural institution by definition. All member nations are somewhat represented and you meet and work with all colors and races, from yellow to black to brown and to white. As English is the main language, everyone works and converses with each other and feels like they are one family regardless where they come from and what color or faces or accent they have. Of course, we make fun of each other, but it’s never hateful. When you exit onto the streets of the USA, locals do not understand that congeniality, as they are still stigmatized into racial differences in spite of many years of activism in this area.
But for us, that did not matter and we married on January 25, 1974.
John and Joy’s civil marriage and the parties
Though left and right our decision was criticized in 1974, after 40 years we still stand while many of the critics failed.
Both children, here pictured at my family residence in Holland, are products of a multicultural colorless approach to life. Both have successful careers, saw a lot of the Third World, and can reach out to all sides and relate to their weaknesses and strengths. Character counts, color does not. They learned to be standard bearers of good family values, keeping up the flag of all peaceful nations under one universal God, whatever name He carries or concept He represents. We are called “the family of the United Nations”, without all the infighting of that body.
The proof is that often derided multiculturalism works, and we will be celebrating this shortly.
Next – Guyana – The Blessing
The Invincible Sir Tiger – A dog Story
Sir Tiger is a Jack Russell with an impressive pedigree. He and his brother Sir Kodak were born in 1997 on a sprawling estate, as noblemen often are, in Republican Virginia, surrounded by thoroughbred horses. Sadly, Sir Kodak passed away at Christmas 2012, leaving the family in ashen mood for the year-end festivities and a good deal of the rest of 2013. He was an unforgettable dog, very handsome, who jumped over fences and ran after squirrels, mostly to chase them away as unwelcome intruders, but occasionally he caught one and left it proudly at the doorstep. In his unbridled enthusiasm, he sometimes miscalculated his reach and broke his leg one day.
His brother, Sir Tiger, came from the same esteemed litter, but always remained the “second brother”. Actually, Sir Tiger joined Sir Kodak because Sir Kodak couldn’t stand being alone in the backyard. As a little pup, Sir Kodak screamed and yelped to tell us he missed his brother, so we went back to the Virginian Estate, to get Sir Tiger. Sir Tiger was selected because he was all white, with one brown ear, and smart black eyes. A gentleman by nature, definitely less bossy and adventurous than his brother, and perhaps bisexual. But these alternatives were wiped out, because both were neutered. The vet said that would make their lives a lot happier, being liberated from the ever nerve-wrecking urge to go looking for the opposite sex and cause havoc in the neighborhood siring off-spring left and right, and be chased by furious neighbors, waving damage claims in their hands. On the other hand it was our impression it made Sir Tiger actively gay, as he was seen on top of his brother, licking him to climax and vice versa. Whatever. For privacy reasons, we did not take pictures.
Photo above: Kodak and Tiger awaiting “Mom’s” return from shopping (forever).
Photo below: Tiger keeping Kodak warm in his pen during his last days.
Kodak has written a biography of their lives, which I found in the yard, buried with a few bones he hadn’t want to share with his brother. This will be published sometime later and it’s quite a story. I never knew dogs knew so much and were such keen observers of human nature.
Photo above: Kodak and Tiger together on Christmas eve 2012.
Photo below: Kodak looking sad as he knows his days are numbered.
The shrine when Sir Kodak passed away, remembering how he was a puppy.
Back to Sir Tiger. While Sir Kodak jumped fences, Sir Tiger was a sprinter. You see those Jack Russells running after a fake fox-smelling cloth at horse shows: That was Tiger. He ran in large circles over the sports field near our house, literally flying through the air, and he sometimes still does.
He is now about 17 years old. 7 times 17 means 104 human years, an old man you would say. But no. He has a tumor somewhere in his body, arthritis in his hind legs, sees less then he wants to admit, still hears my whistle albeit after repeated trials, but otherwise keeps running with me in the field as if he were still a pup. Because he is small, people on the street , especially young girls, bend over and say, “Oh what a lovely puppy, may I pet him,” and then he growls like an old man, showing his teeth. You should see the terrified reactions, but they love him nevertheless. Until someone, thinking he is a puppy, grabs him from behind the fence in an unguarded moment, to take him home and appropriate him as their dog. This is what we thought had happened when we missed Tiger one late afternoon after coming home with the car from visiting our daughter, who lives nearby.
Joy, my wife, asked, “Is Tiger still in the yard?” I supposed she had let him out after we got back, to do the usual, and took a look, but he was nowhere. Puzzled, I searched for him, but didn’t see him anywhere. I went back and reported the strange event to Joy: all gates were locked, so how did he get out?
Five-star alarm. I jumped in the old Toyota our daughter left in front of the house because she bought a new car, to see if he was scourging the neighborhood for a friend or a left-over bone, which he never does (his brother did this repeatedly). No Tiger. When it got dark, I called the police: “Dog Kidnapped!”. They rushed by with huge torches and searched all over the yard, the neighborhood, even inside the house: no Tiger. Larceny report filed. I called all the animal shelters in the area, in case he was found or dropped when the thieves noticed he was not a puppy but old and sickly and no fun. A sleepless night, sometimes getting up to see if he wasn’t lingering at the front door.
The next day, I scanned a picture of Tiger, took it to a Kinko shop, laminated ten copies with a typed description of Tiger underneath, underlining he needed about ten pills a day for all his ailments and special soft food, and hung them on trees in the neighborhood streets. End afternoon, I crossed the cul-de-sac to tell our friends Mike and Tara, who are with the Alexandria Police, and they came over to have a drink and talk strategy how to find back Sir Tiger, and they sent out an alert with his picture to the whole force.
Nobody called. Tiger was gone. Everybody in hysterics. The house – and the yard – were suddenly very quiet. Since he has a rather shrill bark, some neighbors probably let a sigh of relief.
On the third day in the morning, I had to go somewhere and got into my Jag XK8 in the garage. And what??? There was Sir Tiger sleeping comfortably in my driver’s seat! He looked up, sort of smiling, a why-did-I-take-so-long face, got up and jumped out. Not a poop and not a pee in the car and not one bark for three days!
He had fallen asleep in the back of the car on the way back, and we had totally forgotten to take him out. That is, Joy thought I had, and I thought she had and then let him out in the yard, but in the end none of us had.
And so began the roll-back of the five-star alarm: calling the police, the animal shelters, taking down the signs, telling the neighborhood “Tiger was found.” As for Sir Tiger, he took his habitual place in the kitchen, after eating for three days, and went on with his busy dog-life. At present, he is still active, likes to run on the field, takes extensive naps, and loves car rides.
I’m sure this won’t happen again.