Information About H. Smits

Memories

Memories are based on documents, family lore or personal experiences. They give more information about a person, but are not necessarilly complete or correct.

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I have heard that the Smits family used to be very poor.

My father was sent to Friesland or Groningen in the winter of 1944-45, which is known in Holland as the “hunger winter,” when he was ten. He has been there with two families, but I don’t know any further details about that. I think it was a bad experience with one of the two families.

After his school education, he almost always worked in metal, including as a welder. He probably did no more than a few years of craft school, but later (when I was ten or twelve years old) he also took courses at the LOI, the Dutch institute for correspondence courses.

My father originally worked in Amsterdam, and continued to do so when we moved to Bovenkarspel. After a while he switched to work at an agricultural mechanization company in Grootebroek, then as a draftsman in Alkmaar, and later again in Amsterdam. There he worked at the Oranje Vrijstaat Kade, when I lived in the Transvaalstraat. I could walk there from my house.

The work he did, welding and other metal machining, led to problems with his lungs. In 1986 or 1987 he got so many problems with his lungs that he came into the sickness law, and finally after a year into disability.

Screen capture of a super-8 video: watching deer in the Veluwe.

As a father, he always did many things with us. He went cycling with us children, and taking forest walks. At Bloemendaal, at the beach, we took dune walks, and he also went swimming in the sea with us.

When we were in the Veluwe, he often got up before dawn to watch deer. Where we now live in America, deer are very common, they regularly walk through our yard, but seeing a real wild deer was of course very special in The Netherlands. I still think of him when I see a deer walking through the yard here.