When I was still in school, oftentimes I would drop by Baron Music and Electronics which was a new store at the time in Lynden, Washington. While there I’d spend hours looking through the classical music section to see which record to buy next. Years later, after college, I returned to Lynden to pursue a career in the radio broadcasting business. At the time, Sid owned a tiny FM station with offices next to Baron Music and Electronics. Remembering me from my earlier days hanging out in his store, Sid offered me a job working at the radio station. However, Sid also mentioned that he was negotiating to sell the station to someone else and that my job might not be permanent. In spite of his warning, I decided to take the job anyway. It was just good to have a job in radio, which was my passion. At that time, in the mid 1960s, FM radio was not yet popular and few stations made money. We decided something had to be done to attract more listeners as well as advertisers to the station. Sid and I worked well together because he is an idea man and I’m good with follow through and details.
One of Sid’s ideas was to start broadcasting local sports, especially high school basketball. At the time nobody broadcast high school basketball games on the radio. I was responsible for hiring the play-by-play announcers, setting up the equipment and selling the ads. The idea turned out to be a hit and soon the radio station was making money. In fact it was so successful that in the next season we also added high school football.
I worked with Sid at the radio station for nearly twelve years and throughout that time he was my mentor. When I left to sell Allen Organs, and became the west coast distributor of church organs, Sid encouraged me and to this day we have remained good friends.
Sid gave me a chance to start my career, even though I lacked experience, which is something I’ll always be thankful for. He also was my mentor and taught me how to sell. Sid stressed always calling on customers at the right time (when they needed what I sold), and to have something I believed in to sell.
—Jerry VanderPol, former FM station manager. He has sold his church organ business and is now retired. He remains in high demand as a church organist and choir director. He lives with his wife in the North Seattle area.
Whether you are starting a business or deciding what career path to follow, it is important to follow your passions. In my life I have always done what both excited me and stirred my interests. While making money is important, it cannot be the sole determining factor when starting a business.
When I was seven or eight, my dad showed me how to milk cows. As World War II raged on, milking the cows was something I did every morning no matter what was happening in our country. Of course, I would have preferred to continue my slumber for a couple of hours rather than get up at six o’clock to do it. Especially in the early spring when the weather was cold or rainy and the cows were no longer in the warm barn. I remember one morning in particular when Dad was either impatient, a little cranky, or both–probably because the cows were out in the field, some distance from the house.
That morning I dressed groggily in the dark room. The closed window drapes hid any view of the weather outside. Peeking through a slit in the drapes, I noticed it wasn’t raining. It looked like it could be the beginning of a beautiful day in May just prior to me celebrating my tenth birthday.
While Dad was busy doing other chores, I loaded the wheelbarrow with two empty ten-gallon milk cans, two pails, and two milk stools. Dad opened the heavy wooden gate leading to the pasture where our small herd of black and white milk cows were peacefully grazing. Dew was heavy on the grass. Birds were chirping and searching for twigs or straws of dead grass to build their nests and raise a family of baby birds. Everywhere was evidence of new life beginning to show off the colors, smells, and beauty of an early spring day.
Dad, who was never talkative in the morning, pointed to one of the cows he wanted me to milk. I sat down on my milk stool with the bucket firmly lodged between my knees and began milking. That was when I first heard unfamiliar sounds coming from far away. Rarely was there any traffic this early in the morning. But now I could hear the sound of a truck engine coming down the road from the direction of Surhuisterveen. I stopped milking and looked toward the road, straining to see. Suddenly, there they were. Not just one truck, but five or six. They were not ordinary transport trucks but green, canvas-covered vehicles–military vehicles–and they were not paying attention to any speed limits.
Then I heard a distant explosion, followed by the deep, droning sound of many engines. I knew they must be airplanes, but I couldn’t see them. They were not like the regular KLM passenger airplane that used to scare me while flying over our house each day. I looked in the direction where Dad was milking a cow. He looked back at me, but neither of us spoke. We both knew something highly unusual was happening. This peaceful spring morning had taken a scary twist. Dad quickly loaded the filled milk cans onto the wheelbarrow and we headed for the house. The remaining morning chores of feeding the pigs, chickens, and horse were delayed. I followed Dad inside where he promptly turned on the radio. He stood as if he was glued to the floor while waiting impatiently for the radio tubes to warm up. Finally we heard the announcer’s voice, with its mixture of somber seriousness, excitement, and anxiety. Mom, who was setting the breakfast table, seemed to freeze into still frame as the news came over the airwaves. Hitler’s armies and air force, the Luftwaffe, had crossed the borders of neutral Holland. Cities had been bombed. Many innocent people were dead and dying.
There had been talk that, sooner or later, Adolph Hitler might decide to turn his armies loose on the Netherlands. But the Netherlands had declared its neutrality and many Dutch believed Hitler would honor the declaration. On May 10, 1940, that trust was shattered when the Germans invaded. All my fears about Adolph Hitler and his deadly airplanes had now become real. I thought about Mr. Nobach, a local Nazi sympathizer, and the praise he had given Hitler while we were talking in the field. Would he still welcome Hitler into the Netherlands now that their forces had killed our countrymen? The carefree world of a ten-year-old had abruptly been replaced with a world where I would never again feel completely safe. After breakfast, as he did every morning, Dad reached for the Bible. It was such a regular custom that we kids rarely paid much attention. Usually, the serious expressions on our faces mostly reflected our pretension that we were listening. This morning was different. Dad read from Psalm 42: “Though an army shall rise up against me, I will fear no evil, for God is with us.”
I listened to every word of that reading and of the prayer that followed. The dark clouds of war now hung over our country, over my life and the lives of my family. Would I survive? For how long? Would we get bombed? Would my little brother get killed, too? What about my sisters and parents? I was afraid. All the security and predictability of our daily existence was gone and replaced by an enormous fear of the unknown.
I walked outside and looked for a place of solitude. I sat down behind the barn, where no one could see me. Looking up into the sky, which had always been peaceful, I tried to see beyond the danger and hostility created by enemy aircraft. Far above the menace on planet earth was God. Kneeling, I talked to God, praying for the safety of my family and for an end to the war. But I had a frightening feeling that this day marked the beginning of much worse to come.
In 1943, when I was thirteen, my mother came home one day and placed her bicycle against the brick wall of the house and called me. “Sietze,” she said, “Your grandpa’s brother, my uncle Evert passed away.” I could tell Mom was sad so I nodded sympathetically. I had met uncle Evert at least a couple times and could clearly envision the appearance of the round-faced, gray-haired elderly gentleman. Mom continued, “Sietze, when uncle Evert retired from his wooden shoe making business he became a beekeeper. There are about six boxes of hives full of honeybees. They don’t know what to do with them. Are you interested in becoming a beekeeper and selling the honey after you harvest it?” As a young teenager I knew little about bees other than they can sting you. I remembered once walking across our small front lawn with bare feet and stepping on a clover flower not knowing that a bee was busy attempting to extract some nectar from the flower. That bee got me right on the bottom of my foot. It swelled up and hurt for three days. However, being able to harvest and sell honey sounded appealing. Maybe I would earn a little money. I studied long and hard to learn about the fascinating complex customs, work habits and social hierarchy of each family of bees living in a hive.
I had graduated from grade school at age thirteen and enrolled in a school of slightly higher learning. The school was some distance away and I had to board a small train daily to get to the small city of Drachten where it was located. By this time I had outgrown the age of “marbles.” At the age of thirteen most boys started smoking. The war was still raging and real tobacco was not available. As a result, the kids rolled their own cigarettes using whatever could reasonably be substituted for tobacco. If someone had acquired some real tobacco on the “black market” many boys begged him to sell them just enough to roll a thin cigarette. I’d read a little about beekeepers using tobacco to calm their bees. Even though I’d only had the bees for a few days and had not yet opened the top cover of the hive, I was excited about this prospect, and couldn’t wait to get home to learn what I needed to do to apply for a “Beekeepers Tobacco Permit.” So, as I sat in a class at school and should have been concentrating on every word the teacher said, instead I was dreaming about my bees. That’s when it happened.
It was early afternoon when my daydreaming was interrupted by the piercing sounds of air raid sirens. Suddenly, everyone bolted upright in their seats. As the teacher shouted for us to crawl under our desks for cover, we heard the eerie whistling sound of bombs screaming earthward. All around us was the cacophony of roaring airplane engines, exploding bombs, and the rattle of heavy-caliber machine guns. Through it all came the wail of the sirens. Although I was terrified, at the same time I was curious to see what was happening. On all fours I crawled over the hardwood floor through the exit and into the schoolyard. There I witnessed the sky filled with aircraft. German fighter planes were attacking hundreds of four-engine bombers on the way to the German heartland. The defense by Allied fighter planes was fast and furious. One moment they were corkscrewing upwards and another moment they were diving. Sometimes one of the planes would go into a steep dive and then rise straight up as it tried to get a tactical advantage on another aircraft. The success of the maneuver depended a great deal on the skill of the fighter pilot. I laid on my back against the wall of the school building watching the action with fear and awe. I was fascinated with airplanes and had studied the different types of planes used in war. I watched as a Messerschmitt desperately tried to outmaneuver a pursuing P-38. With guns spewing hundreds of 50-caliber bullets together with 20 mm shells from its wing cannon. The Messerschmitt was in a near-vertical dive, blazing away with all four machine guns. It looked as if both aircraft might slam into the school in another second or two. In addition, heavy-caliber machine gun bullets kicked up gravel in the schoolyard not far from me. A huge bomber corkscrewed toward earth in a screaming death dive, as crew members tumbled out of the fatally-stricken craft. Not all of the parachutes opened. I jumped involuntarily as one uniformed body slammed into pastureland adjoining the school grounds. The Messerschmitt made one final, desperate effort to climb steeply away from the devastating firepower of the P-38. A moment later, it exploded into a fireball and crashed straight down. At that moment I could see the smoke rising from several crash sites.
As quickly as it had started, it was over. Instant death and destruction had loomed so near. Now Drachten returned to life again and I shakily walked into the classroom just as students crawled out from underneath their desks. After school, I walked a short distance to the railroad station and boarded the tram on its way to a stop in Opende. The big locomotive pulling the cars barely left the station when it came to an unscheduled stop. I noticed German guards on both sides of the track. No one was allowed to exit the train. Nearly two hours passed before the wreckage of a crashed Messerschmitt was cleared and the train once again began moving toward its first regular stop, Opende.
It was not easy to get my mind off the dramatic events of the school day. Watching someone fall from the sky and smack into the ground to an instant death was more than a young boy can find peace with. Though I didn’t talk about it, this incident was constantly on my mind as I helped Dad milk the cows, feed the calves, the pigs and the chickens. It wasn’t until much later in the evening, while studying my school assignments for the following day, that I remembered my bees and the anticipated clandestine tobacco business. I found the application in among my “bee papers.” The reason beekeepers were entitled to a tobacco allotment during the war was because the only way the beekeeper could harvest honey without getting killed by bee-stings was to tranquilize them with real tobacco smoke. It was about ten days later when a package arrived from Douwe-Egberts Tobacco Company. The package contained two pounds of real pipe tobacco. It was a little coarser than cigarette tobacco, but given that the kids smoked all kinds of dried leaves that didn’t even resemble tobacco, my being able to get some of real tobacco would be regarded as a miracle. Before the tobacco had arrived, I contacted an elderly beekeeper, Mr. Loonstra, about the kind of pipe I would need. He gave me a short demonstration. The cup of the pipe was covered by what could be described as a small chimney. The beekeeper blew into the chimney by directing the pipe mouthpiece at the bees. How ingenious, I thought. I had been worrying about having to smoke a pipe. Now I learned that I wouldn’t even get smoke in my mouth much less my lungs.
Mr. Loonstra was a kind old man with years of experience in taking care of bees and harvesting honey. I must have asked him endless questions. He promised that I could even use his centrifuge for extracting the honey from the cells where the bees had put the honey. After each cell was filled the bees would cover the small storage cell with a thin film of beeswax. Each frame contained hundreds of cells. I asked Mr. Loonstra what he used the honey for. “Well,” he said, “the family uses a few jars but I sell most of it to neighbors and some to grocery stores. You’ll get a lot more honey than your family can use too, Sietze. You won’t have any problem selling your honey.” This was very exciting. Not only would I get into the tobacco business, but I would also be able to earn a little money selling honey.
At school during the lunch break I talked to a number of kids and told them that I would have real tobacco which I could sell in small packages. They wanted to know how many cigarettes they could make and what the price would be. I told them that I would include a package of cigarette paper which they were accustomed to using when they rolled their own junk-filled cigarettes. Then I told them if they rolled their cigarettes thin they would be able to make ten maybe fifteen thin cigarettes and the price would be fifty cents including a package of the proper paper leafs for making their own smokes. They wanted to place orders for two or more little bags of my tobacco but I told them that I would only sell one small bag per person. The news spread like wildfire and before the day was over I had orders for twenty-two little bags of tobacco. I was a little worried when I stopped at a small shop for some small paper bags. They were only ten cents for a dozen but I didn’t want to get rid of too much of my tobacco. At home, for my own information, I rolled a thin cigarette. Then I removed the paper foil surrounding the tobacco and placed it on a small saucer. Okay, I needed about fifteen times that quantity in each little bag. I knew that, as a beekeeper, I would be allotted an additional quantity of tobacco later. Interestingly, my parents never knew that their young teenaged son was a “black market” tobacco dealer.
By the early spring of 1945 we knew the Germans were on the ropes. The occupying forces also knew it. But instead of relieving their yoke of oppression, the Germans became more bitter and brutal. Life became very dangerous for many including our family. Mom and Dad had been active in the underground resistance movement and I knew that we were hiding a man who was wanted dead or alive by the Germans. If he were found our whole family would be executed. Dad looked very serious when he walked up to me. “Sietze, we suspect that you know about our secret radio,” Dad said, looking at me as if expecting an answer.
Almost imperceptibly, I nodded.
“But we don’t think you know about our secret pistol.”
Fortunately, he didn’t seem to expect an answer. I didn’t need to confess that I knew about the pistol and where its secret hiding place was. I also knew that Mr. Schipper, the man we were hiding, had a pistol that was much larger than the one hidden just below the roof tiles in the straw. Mr. Schipper was a police officer in a city in the province of Friesland. He was deeply involved in the Dutch resistance movement but had managed to escape when his group was caught recovering weapons dropped by the British to equip the Dutch freedom fighters.
“It’s getting much too dangerous to keep those items,” Dad continued. “If I were to be captured, the Germans would ask me about such things. If I was to deny it, and the items should subsequently be found, they would kill me on the spot. That’s why we want you to take the radio and the gun and bury them somewhere. Make sure it’s not an obvious place that could be easily discovered. Instead you must find a very good place to hide these items. Mom and I do not want to know where you hid them, and you are absolutely never to breathe a word about their existence.”
With that he reached into his inside coat pocket and handed me the revolver and a small box of bullets. As both my parents turned to go into the house, Mom looked at me and said: “You know where the radio is, don’t you, Sietze?” I nodded remembering the many times I had seen my mother crawling in the space under an alcove bed to listen to the Dutch language message for the Dutch underground, broadcast by the BBC from London. What I did not know was that we would soon experience the most dramatic and life-threatening day of the entire five years of Nazi occupation. The details of my experiences during those five years are described in my book, The Way it Was.
The day of liberation came in early May 1945. With shovel in hand I headed for the chicken coop. I moved the heavy drinking water container and started digging to unearth the carton containing the old radio I had buried a few months earlier. Since I had not taken much time to complete that secret operation, I knew it wasn’t very deep. Because I didn’t want to damage the old radio, I was digging carefully. A plan had already been forming in my mind about how to reuse it. Suddenly I saw a big mouse with a family of small mice jump through the hole I had just put in the cardboard box. Somehow a pregnant mouse had chewed her way through the cardboard, built a cozy nest inside and was busy raising her family. After I had removed the cardboard box containing the radio, I filled the hole and shoved the chicken water feeder back in place. That’s when I finally turned my attention to the old radio. I didn’t have the luxury of time when I had buried it and the old wooden radio didn’t have a back cover. Nor did I have an electrical outlet nearby to see if it still worked. Instead I told my parents that the old radio had housed a mouse family and I didn’t think it would ever work again. “Can I have it?,” I asked. Since liberation had finally come they were in a good mood and agreed that I could have the old radio.
My interest in the mysteries of electronics was awakened when, as a little boy, I was visiting my grandpa and grandma Hoekstra. Grandma always fixed me a cup of tea with a large cube of sugar and a cookie. Grandpa got up and turned a switch on a little wooden box with a fabric grille hanging on the wall in their living room. Suddenly the voice of a man emanated from the box. I stared at the box and wondered how a human voice could come from something that was clearly too small to accommodate even the tiniest human being. Later, after the war began, I remember sitting in church listening to the sounds of airplane engines. I knew that pilots in those planes were able to communicate with other airplanes as well as controllers in a tower on the ground. Those were the mysteries that fascinated me. What I could not have known was that those experiences would later lead to what would be a big part of my career.
But on that day in 1945, I became the owner of an old radio. After housing a family of mice, I wasn’t at all surprised that the radio no longer worked. Maybe I could learn how to fix it. As a fifteen-year-old boy I didn’t know that I couldn’t start a small radio business. In my imagination nothing was impossible. My search for information about electronics had started. Then in late 1945 I read an announcement about a new publication called Electron. I wasted no time ordering a subscription. It was exciting when, after a long wait, the mailman, Mr. Dalmolen, delivered the first issue to our house. Not only did I read every word of all the articles, but also the advertisements. After the end of the Second World War new radios were not available for nearly a year. The Dutch manufacturers of radios such as NV Philips, as well as all the German electronics manufacturers, had all been required to manufacture electronics for the German military. That, I thought, was the reason I found so many want ads in my first copy of Electron magazine inquiring about purchasing radio parts. That gave me an idea. I had an old radio that didn’t work but was full of parts.
I befriended a young man living in an adjoining town who also had an interest in all things “electronic.” His last name was Veenstra and before long we established a little company and named it “Radio Veenron.” We placed a small ad in Electron magazine offering radio parts for sale. Our customers wouldn’t know that we were just a couple of teenagers and that our business was conducted from my family farmhouse. I quickly needed to learn the difference between a radio power transformer and a filter condenser and everything in between. I received orders and mailed the parts to the customers who lived a long way from my hometown, Opende. Not even my parents knew about my business activities. However, that all soon changed.
The weather was pleasant one early morning in the province of Zeeland. It was a province located in the most Southwestern corner of Holland near Belgium and the North Sea. Two men with a common interest in radios and electronics had read the small “Radio Veenron” ad. Since radio parts were scarce after the war, they decided to make the long drive from Zeeland to the province of Groningen, which was located in the extreme Northern part of Holland. I can only imagine that, upon their arrival in the small town of Opende, they breathed a sigh of relief. They had been driving for several hours in an old car that somehow had survived being requisitioned by the Germans during the war. I can imagine that they drove slowly along the brick main street of Opende looking for storefronts. Especially a storefront emblazoned with “Radio Veenron” on the large display window. They must have eventually come to the conclusion that there was no such store. I can imagine that one of the gentlemen pulled his copy of the magazine from his pocket to check the ad and the company address. Yes, there it was, Radio Veenron, D219 Opende, Gron.
Because it was late in the afternoon, they must have started by asking for directions. Finally they took the sand path and arrived at our farmhouse where my parents, my siblings and I all lived. Fortunately, I was attending a school specializing in agriculture and not home. My mother was no less surprised than the two gentlemen from Zeeland. However my mom knew nothing about it. I don’t think she told the completely flabbergasted gentlemen that her son might know more about it. After I arrived home from school I had a lot of questions to answer together with an order to “cease and desist.” That was the end of our Radio Veenron enterprise but not the end of my interest in radio and electronics. That continued until the day our family immigrated to the United States in May 1948.