I was born on April 9 in the year 1928, on an Easter Monday morning. Easter Monday is celebrated in the old country about the same as Sunday or Christmas day. I was born at home as was the custom then. My brother, Adam, who was the oldest at 6 years old would start school three weeks later on the 1^st of May. For many years that was the day the school year began. Later it was moved to April 1 and later still to September 1. We were quite close together in age with the first six of us only 15 or 16 months apart.

In those days people only went to the doctor when they were sick and that meant really sick. Those people had worked hard all their lives and were used to much less comfort than we are, so they were quite hardy. A doctor was also very costly in comparison to doctors today. Their fees were probably still low, but everyone tried to avoid spending money as much as possible. Thus most women never went for a check-up in advance. Sometimes the doctor was notified shortly before the day was coming that his help was expected when the baby would be born, but at least quite a while ahead an appointment was made with a midwife. In those days this was often an elderly lady with very little training, often a widow. I remember all these things from my school days whenever another brother or sister was born. There are eight brothers and sisters younger than me, and I remember the birth of six of them. I was the sixth child in the family.

Of the first couple of years, I know only a few things which were told to me later. When I was a baby I was very fat. The doctor decided I should lose weight. At first there were no results, so he became stricter about my diet and at last I started to lose weight, and then it went so fast they didn’t know how to stop it. I lost way too much, became skinny and weak, developed pneumonia and other diseases and for a couple of years my health was quite poor. The first thing I can remember about my life is that I was sick and lay in a crib in front of the window in the living room and that my brother Henk and sister Geertje were skating outside on the ice. I was quite disappointed that I was not allowed out of bed. Likely this was in February 1932, so I was almost four years old.