Dutch Spirit, American Heart

February 19, 2011

The reason for my absence from the blogging world (and my mad race at playing catch up on all my missed posts as of late) is that my life for the last long while has been completely engulfed by a history project I took on. 

I have been writing Matt's grandparent's family history. It started out as a 40 page paper for the last class I took before graduating from BYU a year and a half ago, and turned into a 240 page book that I just finished and had printed, bound, and distributed to friends and family at the beginning of February, 2011. 

The project was massive but I had a wonderful time researching, writing, and learning about my husband's amazing heritage. Matt's grandparents are both still alive and are the most wonderful people. They both grew up in the Netherlands and lived through WWII in a German-occupied Holland. They have some amazing stories from their childhood in Holland, their time during the war, their journey to and new life in America, and their lives as parents to twelve children. 

Matt's grandma, Freddie, (and her eight siblings) lost her mother at the age of 10, then her father shortly after she turned 11. 

She and her two younger siblings were cared for by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Holland until they finished school at 13 and were able to get jobs and move out on their own.

 

One of Freddie's older brothers (Kees) and his wife risked their lives to raise a little Jewish girl as their own after her parents were killed at German concentration camps in Poland.

Govert was one of ten children.

 His courageous, devout mother suffered much persecution in her search for religious truth. She was the first person in her town in Holland to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

Her husband never joined, but her children were all later baptized into the the Church.

Govert had the honor of being numbered among the 28,750 Boy Scouts (from 54 countries around the world) who attended the 5th annual Boy Scout World Jamboree--hosted in Holland in 1937. This was the last Jamboree attended by the Boy Scouts' founder, Lord Baden Powell.  

And Govert assisted the Dutch Underground and saved the lives of over 50 people imprisoned by the Germans during World War II.

Govert and Freddie married in 1944, shortly before the end of World War II. Material was scarce at the time so Freddie's wedding dress was sewn from a silk parachute found in a downed American fighter plane.

Govert and Freddie are now the proud grandparents to 38 grandchildren and 39 great grandchildren - and counting. I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to get to know them better--and to be numbered among their posterity. 

Thank you Govert and Freddie for sharing your lives with me. 

To download the PDF of
Dutch Spirit, American Heart: A History of Frederika van der Wouden and Govert Copier, click here
(You'll probably get a message saying the file is too big to download, but it seems to work if you just click "download anyway.")