Tag: priest

52 Weeks – Week 41: Handed Down

For this week’s theme for the  52 Ancestors Challenge, “Handed Down”, I know exactly what I wanted to share.

Tante Riet (1932-2021) in 2017.

As I wrote about in Week 10, my Tante Riet served as a missionary in Metro Lampung, Indonesia for many of years. When I was around 15 years old, she visited us during a trip she took to Canada. She gave me a hand-painted silk bookmark from Indonesia. I though I knew where I had been carefully storing it, but to my surprise it wasn’t where I thought it would be. Wat jammer, as you might say in Dutch.

However, I did find many wonderful mementos – wedding invitations, cards, letters, photos, and other souvenirs of special events. I even found a lovely thank you note a close friend of mine gave me thirty years ago. She wrote the first half in Dutch. While I could understand it at the time, with three decades of struggling to learn the language, I’m happy to say that I fully understand it now. Good thing I set it aside for so long!

Cornelis Jan “Kees” Komen (1928-1987)

However, none of those items were things that fit this week’s theme. So instead I will share an item I inherited from one of Tante Riet’s older brother, Oom Kees. I also wrote about him in Week 10 and, like his sister, he led a religious life. I never met Oom Kees, who passed away in 1987. Somehow this item made its way from him to my mother, who passed it on to me – a very nice bottle opener. I have no idea if this was of any special significance to him or if there was a story behind it. I also have no idea how or why my great uncle came into possession of this item, which is a promotional item advertising a potato wholesaler. Was his parish a big purchaser of wholesale potatoes?

The note my mother enclosed when she sent it to me -which I still have – does not explain much. It simply says that it belonged to Oom Kees, my dad’s uncle, who had passed away in January that year. However, I received it gratefully, as I had little in the way of physical mementos from my family in the Netherlands.

I haven’t taken this out of the box in decades. I only took it out to photograph it for this post.
The back side.

The back side of the opener advertises “A.C. Loogman & Zonen – Groothandel in Aardappelen”. In English, “A.C. Loogman & Sons – Potato Wholesalers”. It seems odd that they’d have a bottle opener as a promotional item. You would think a more appropriate item might be a potato peeler.

I googled the company and it turns out they were in business up to November 2020, at which time it went bankrupt. Using the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive, I found the from the last capture of their website (www.acloogman.nl), which included a short company history, which I’ve translated into English:

When you think of quality potatoes, you cannot ignore AC Loogman. Since 1953, we have ensured that customers from all over the world can enjoy the best potato varieties, collected directly from the grower and packed by us according to their wishes. Thanks to our extensive fleet and ultramodern fully automatic packaging machines, we can deliver large quantities within the country and abroad. But smaller regional customers can still count on our personal and committed service.

While a rather nondescript item, it certainly is one of the oddest heirlooms in my possession!

Addendum

I generally focus on my side of the family in this blog, so it did not occur to me to think of my wife’s veil for our wedding. It was the same veil her great grandmother wore when she got married in 1918. A costume designer my wife knows did some repair work on it and added a bit of volume to it to spruce it up and make it look as good as new.

Addendum to the Addendum (Feb. 17, 2025): I just learned from a September 1918 newspaper that my wife’s great great great grandmother wore the same veil at her wedding in 1866. So my wife was wearing a pre-Confederation item! Talk about something old to go with the something new, borrowed, and blue!

52 Weeks – Week Ten

Worship

In what seems a bit of a change of course, this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Worship”. As the only mayor I’ve found in our family tree is my wife’s third great grandfather, this week I’ll be writing about three men and women of the cloth on my father’s side of the family. My grandmother had a brother who was a priest and a sister who was a nun, while my grandfather had a sister who became a nun.

Zr. Marie Adriana Komen (1932-2021)

Born in 1932, Marie Adriana “Riet” Komen was the youngest of child of my great grandparents, Adrianus Komen and Elizabeth Bakker. On my reading of the funeral card and “familieberichten” (“family message”, something akin to an obituary) my cousin sent me after she died, Tante* Riet entered religious training when she was 17. Tante Riet took her vows as a Roman Catholic nun in August 1954, when she was 22. She belonged to the order “Zusters van ‘t H. Hart”, which translates as “Sisters of the Sacred Heart”, which was a teaching order. Tante Riet served as a missionary in Metro Lampung, Indonesia for many of years. Tante Riet also spent time in Finland, where her order also served. By 1997, Tante Reit was Mother Superior of her order, in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Later, she spent several years at St. Bernadette Monastery, in Maliskamp, Noord-Brabant before retiring to Nijmegen.

Tante Riet in 2017

When I was in grade ten, Tante Riet came to Canada to visit my grandmother in southern Alberta. My grandparents and great aunt made the drive to visit us in northern British Columbia. During that visit she gave me a hand-painted silk bookmark from her time in Indonesia. During my last visit to the Netherlands in 2017, my dad’s cousin drove me and my parents to visit her. We literally drove across the country, going from Langedijk in Noord Holland to Nijmegen on the German border in a matter of hours. Compare that to Canada, where driving across the whole country is much longer than three hours! I wrote to her several times afterwards, but she found corresponding more difficult in her last years.

Tante Riet passed away last year, in August 2021. Funeral services were restricted due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While a funeral home in Den Bosch, Noord-Brabant handled the services, while writing this it only just dawned on me that I do not know where she was interred.

Familieberichten for Tante Riet
Cornelis Jan “Kees” Komen (1928-1987)

Cornelis Jan “Kees” Komen was the middle child of my grandmother’s family, born in 1928. Oom* Kees was a Roman Catholic priest. I do not know what order he belonged to. In his teens, he attended Het Klein Seminarie Hageveld in Heemstede, Noord Holland, Netherlands. Hageveld was a grammar school and “minor seminary”, a secondary school that prepared boys for eventual enrollment at an actual seminary to prepare for the priesthood. Oom Kees was ordained in May 1958.

Oom Kees is buried at St. Barbara Roman Catholic Cemetery in Haarlem, Noord Holland. He shares a grave marker with two other priests. Kees’s colleagues are named as “Pastoor” on the marker, while he is identified as a “Kapelaan”, suggesting that he had been assigned to work in a secular institution such as a hospital or school.

I never met Oom Kees, who passed away in 1987, so I do not know much about him personally. Until a few years ago, the only photos I had ever seen of him were of him and the Pope.

Oom Kees certainly liked to see the Pope. On the left is Pope Paul VI. The other two photos show Pope John Paul II.
Bidprentje (Prayer Card) – Cornelis Jan Komen

“Grateful Memory of Chaplain Cornelis Jan Komen Born in Langedijk on April 10, 1928, ordained a priest at the Cathedral of Haarlem on May 31, 1958, he died after an active and meritorious life in Haarlem on January 8, 1987 and was buried on January 12 at St. Barbara Cemetery“
Tante Marie (Zuster Melania) in 1954, shortly after taking her solemn vows.

Turning to my grandfather’s side of the family, my Tante Marie van der Fluit was an Ursuline nun. Born in 1925, she likely entered the convent sometime around 1951. Tante Marie took her vows in 1954 and went by the name “Sister Melania”. As far as I have been able to learn, she spent most of her years of service in Bergen, Noord Holland. I met her once, when I was a kid, when she came to Canada to visit my grandparents. I remember being excited to meet her, because she was the first of my van der Fluit relatives living in the Netherlands who I ever met. Tante Marie passed away in October 2016 – three days before her youngest sister who lived in Canada, Anna “Anny” van der Fluit.

My father with Tante Marie (Zr. Melania) in 2009
  • “Tante” means “aunt” in Dutch. German and French as well.
  • “Oom” means “uncle” in Dutch.