I feel there can't be any new arrivals without preceding departures. And sometimes new arrivals are not yet visible. Why these somewhat puzzling starting sentences? Well, I'll be honest. I have been looking in my albums and folders, and I can't find any inspiring pictures. So I have been looking for a backdoor to write a post that meets this month's theme. I hope I haven't strayed too far. My first picture shows a family on the verge of checking in for a departing KLM flight to New York Idlewild on April 24, 1947. I wrote about the
Vander Dussen family before. Father Sybrand was a Rotterdam milkman with 11 children. He decided to emigrate to the USA and they developed an impressive dairy business in Southern California a.o. in Chino and Corona. Today, the family has over 300 members, and some moved to other states to start a dairy business there.
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The Vander Dussens checking in at Amsterdam Schiphol
airport for their departure to the USA |
The picture shows Mr. and Mrs. Sybrand Vander Dussen and nine children. Their baby twins in cradles were in the hands of stewardesses. In most of my photos of the family, father Sybrand is smoking a cigarette, not unusual in those days. If you have a closer look at the image below, taken over a decade earlier, you'll also notice a cigarette in the hands of all four men. In those days smoking was regarded as fashionable. Nobody knew or cared about the hazards, least of all the tobacco industry itself. Tobacco addiction was not something doctors spoke about. Why this attention to a few strands of smoking tobacco? Well, it is just to connect to another departure.
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KLM aircrew before departure to Batavia on December, 18. 1933
F.l.t.r. Capt. Smirnoff, Soer, Grosveld, Van Beukering |
Today it is out of the question that you see an aircrew posing on the ramp in front of an aircraft, each with a smoking cigarette. But at the time (1933) the rules and regulations apparently differed, if any. The idea behind this legendary (in The Netherlands) flight was to reach Batavia, today's Djakarta, in the (then) Dutch East Indies in record time to deliver the Christmas mail. The aircraft was a Fokker F-XVIII named 'Pelikaan' (Pelican), with registration PH-AIP. Many KLM aircraft at the time bore the names of birds. The crew managed to reach Batavia in four days! Today there is a non-stop flight covering the 7093 miles in 15 hours. The times they are a-changin'.
The return trip in 1933 took a few minutes less, and the operation was a national event. Some 20,000 people came to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport to celebrate the arrival of the Pelikaan on New Year's Eve.
No cigarettes in the last picture nor is the new arrival visible.
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Wedding of Cornelis Doelman (6) and Lea Libert (7)
in Cruyshoutem (B) on July 4, 1921 |
Our (Dutch) family has several ties with Belgium. My own roots are in Kuringen which today is Hasselt in Belgian Limburg. The brother [6] of my maternal grandmother married Belgian Lea Eulalia Hortensia Libert [7], one of the most poetic names in the family. She was from Cruyshoutem in East Flanders.
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| Marriage certificate Doelman x Libert |
Under normal circumstances, the sister of the groom, my grandmother, should have been at the wedding. But she wasn't. However, my grandfather made his appearance there. His name was Gerardus Theodorus de Langen and he is number 9 in this serious-looking company. The reason Grandma wasn't present was that she was about to give birth to my mother's sister a couple of weeks later. So I can imagine that traveling from The Hague to Belgium v.v. was not her favorite pastime then. This new arrival was baptized Theodora Gerarda, how imaginative! But in those days, naming your child after a parent or grandparent was standard practice.
Anyway, it explains why the new arrival can't be seen in this picture. And even if Grandma would have been present ..., well, you understand.
This completes my post with new arrivals. My stock of arrivals is exhausted so this is it! But I'm sure there are more on
Sepia Saturday
A fun post! Thanks for making me laugh, Peter. The signature on the marriage certificate may be the best bureaucratic name ever! In all respect to your family, that wedding party has the most grim faces I've ever seen for a happy occasion. Maybe the caterer hadn't served the food and wine yet?
ReplyDeleteI loved the airplane pictures. Those first long distance flights were amazing feats of courage and training, even if chain smoking the whole way! I think you'll like a story I wrote in 2022 about a similar British commercial aeroplane from the 1930s. Here's the link https://temposenzatempo.blogspot.com/2022/09/music-for-aeroplane.html
I'd say you simply took the scenic route to match the prompt. Nice going, and interesting photos. :)) Yeah, my Dad smoked 2 1/2 packs of cigarettes a day so my siblings and I were subjected to secondhand smoke growing up. It wasn't a common concern back then. Finally, in the '60s my Mom made my Dad smoke in the garage but by then we were all grown up. Today my sisters and I all have problems with what we call "Morning Stuff" - clogged throats & sinuses all linked to that secondhand smoke even all these years later.
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