Tribute

Froukje Cnossen Geertsma
1919 - 2011

My Grandma passed away two weeks ago. She was 91 years old and had been in Hospice care for awhile. Most people say this when a loved one dies, but she was a remarkable woman.


She was born in the Netherlands, lived through the second world war, and immigrated to America with her husband Marten, my grandpa, when the war was over. They began their life together in California, where my grandpa got into the dairy business, then later to Washington where they learned English and started up their own farm.

The photo above is Grandma in her nurse's uniform. This was before the end of the war, marriage, immigration and all of the kids. She was about 25 here, and right in the middle of World War II. She told us that the hospital where she worked as a psychiatric nurse was bombed once. Afterward, she helped transport injured patients to a safer location in wheelbarrows.

At right, with her sister

There were some British allied troops - paratroopers - who took refuge in that hospital during that time. One of them was a young man named Frank. He had been injured, and needed some care from the nurses. He and my grandma became friends after awhile. He had looked for my grandma for years after the war and eventually found out she had immigrated to America. (I think he had a crush on her.) They started writing letters, and did so into their old age.

I met him once while I was living in England for a semester in college. He said that she had helped to save his life during the war. The stories he told me and the way he referred to her and the other Dutch people involved put goosebumps on my skin. "If it weren't for them, we would've been dead. If they had been discovered harboring us, they would've been too."

He cried when he saw me get off the train. He still kept a painting of marigolds on the wall of his home in a little English town, because she gave him a bunch of them on his birthday. He said the marigolds and my grandma were the best thing that happened to him during those years. Later he became a prisoner of war in a German camp. He didn't talk about that part.

Grandma sometimes told us about her brothers too, Pieter and Bouwe. Both were in the Dutch Underground, and received medals of honor after the war from the Prince of the Netherlands for "fighting the tyranny of Hitler". I'm a wee bit proud of them for that.



These are their naturalization papers, from around the time they immigrated through New York City. Grandma said she remembers seeing the Statue of Liberty over the water as their boat came in. Here are their passports too. I love old passports. They seem other-worldly.

Things got to rolling pretty quickly after that. Hello, procreation.

With their first three children: George and the twins, Emma and Janetta

A few more now... my dad is on her lap. He was #5.

They had ten children together - six boys and four girls. The photo above shows eight of them; someone super-imposed the youngest two in the bottom right corner (ha). Grandma was a dairy wife with her hands full for years, but she was always classy.

By the time Grandma died she had 40 grandchildren and over 50 great-grandchildren. The 52nd (I think) was born on the day of her funeral. Most of them still live in Washington, with a few scattered throughout California, Arizona, Colorado and Michigan.

Here's a picture of her, at left, with my other grandma on the right. She was prim and proper most of the time, but had a weakness for slap-stick humor and cracked up all the time when her sons were around, tears rolling down her cheeks sometimes. She had a huge smile.

Telling their stories makes it feel like not everything has been lost.

We'll miss you.