Information About Christoffel Dominicus (Stof) van den Beemt

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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Photo of the twelve children of Johannes Andreas van den Beemt and Dominica Elisabeth Maria Kramer, ca. 1938?

In the back: Hedda, Jan, Nicky, Leo, Gré, Stof. In front: Harry, Trees, Maria, Frans, Cees, Ben

My father and Uncle Frans Brörmann had been friends from an early age. I think they may also have been in the army together, possibly also on the Grebbenberg, but I don’t know for sure.

Wedding of Stof van den Beemt and Wies de Lie

He had graduated as a primary school teacher in Bergen op Zoom, yet continued to study. First as a secondary school teacher, then also English and French. Eventually he ended up at the ULO (later MAVO) in Gorinchem.

After the war my father worked for the prison in Scheveningen. That prison was known during the war as the “Oranjehotel” (Hotel Orange) because resistance fighters were imprisoned there. After the war, the people who had worked with the German occupiers were brought together in that prison. My father was a department head there.

Within a few years, the collaborators were sentenced and transferred to “normal” prisons (or released). My father wanted to resume his old profession as a teacher, and he had the opportunity to work as a teacher in what was then the Dutch East Indies. In 1948 he went ahead and half a later my mother followed with my brother and myself.

Aboard the Willem Ruijs returning from Indonesia to Holland

This was the time of the uprising in the Dutch East Indies, where Indonesians had declared independence in 1945. The uprising lasted until in December 1949 the Netherlands finally recognized the new republic. Subsequently almost all Dutch people had to leave Indonesia. We came back to the Netherlands in 1950 on the ship the Willem Ruijs.

My father had sold everything in Indonesia and put the proceeds in the bank. At that time the Rupia devalued and we were dirt poor when we arrived in the Netherlands.

He became a teacher of the fifth grade of primary school in Schagen, where I also attended school. Then we moved to De Bilt, where he tought French and English at the ULO (later MAVO, the middle/high school). He also gave taught drawing there. I was in my father’s class at the ULO.

The divorce of my parents in 1966 came as a total surprise to me. I just went to school that day in the morning; I came home in the evening and I asked, where is my mother? My father said, “she is gone.” I hadn’t expected a thing. I struggled with that for a while.

House boat “Schienvat”

After his divorce he had to leave the house where we lived (the house belonged to the municipality and had to make way for a new development), and father bought a houseboat. He called that houseboat “Schienvat,” (shining barrel, or lantern). I stayed with a sister-in-law for a while until I got married.

My father retired a bit earlier because of his health. He had a very difficult time after the divorce; he smoked a lot to begin with, but then it was even worse. He wasn’t the only one in the family who smoked a lot; they did say in the family that you “were allowed to smoke before you could drink coffee.” Not really surprising, perhaps, for the family of a cigar manufacturer.

As a hobby he was a “fish fanatic.” Mainly predatory fish, pike and so on, and also sea fishing. One of the reasons for that houseboat was that he could catch fish from his living room in the Paardewater (a side arm of the Merwede canal).

In addition to fishing and drawing, he read a lot, collected coins and antique objects, and (like the entire van den Beemt family) he played bridge. The brothers and sisters were very fanatic bridgers. I myself learned to play bridge when I was thirteen, which was very young back then. I have played bridge in a club until I felt the club was becoming too fanatic.