The Impact of Immigrant Grandparents

From an early age, I knew my mom’s parents were a little different.  My grandma spoke in a mixture of Dutch and English so seamlessly and there were many times that my sisters and I had to say, "grandma…we don’t know what you’re saying."  We ate a lot of suspicious (to us) looking vegetables when at their house, but also had the best gravy I’ve ever eaten.  Grandma always had coffee time in the afternoons and would let us join her and have some of the best biscuits (Café Noir were our favorites).

My grandparents had weirdly cool toys for us to play with.  I remember playing with trolls long before they were cool (in the 1990s).  And my grandma had a real knack for finding beautiful clothes.  She loved to shop with us at a good quality department store (RIP, Jacobsmas).  She had a great eye for fashion, and she always knew the coolest and most desirable toys for kids.  There were 3 of us in 4.5 years, and somehow, my grandma knew that Cabbage Patch dolls were THE gift for Christmas in the early 90s.  

My grandpa had an accent, but we didn’t notice it as much as Grandma’s.  I never saw Grandma write anything, and I don’t know if she could write in English because all of our cards were written by Grandpa.  She never drove or had a driver’s license. One of our favorite stories came from my oldest sister, who accompanied my Grandma to the bank one day.  My sister came home and informed my parents that “Grandma was born in a bank.”  My parents were confused and then realized that Grandma had insisted to the teller, quite firmly and using strong and effective gestures, that she was “BORN HERE” and pointing to the ground.  She meant, of course, that she was born in the U.S.

Grandpa had an accent, but we didn’t notice it very often.  Only after our kid brother was born, named Matthew, did we notice Grandpa and Grandma struggle with the pronunciation.  Dutch doesn’t have a “th” sound, so Grandma said ‘Matt hew’ and Grandma said “Maffew.”

I don’t know all the details, because the family kept the matter private, but there was a divorce and my grandma’s mom lived in the US for a while, and my Grandma was born in the US, but then moved back with her family to the Netherlands and she grew up there.  She always had peppermints with her, and loved to cuddle with us.  She made the absolute best gravy I’ve ever had, and none of us can quite figure out how she made it, though I suspect it was mostly butter.  She sang us funny little Dutch songs to put us to sleep. She had a great sense of humor and a wonderful laugh.  When she was angry at our grandpa she called him “Mon!” and probably many other things in Dutch that I didn’t fully understand.   I know she would have loved to meet and delight in my girls.  I gave my grandma’s name, June, to our oldest daughter, and I love telling her that she’s named for my delightful grandma, June. 

My grandparents were teens during WWII.  My grandma, as a US citizen, was taken to a work camp when the Germans occupied Holland and after the US declared War on Germany.  She never talked about that experience, but I imagine that experience never fully left her.  My grandpa hid from conscription by the Germans and helped with the Dutch resistance as much as he could.  After the war, my grandparents married and were able to emigrate fairly easily since my grandma was already a US citizen.  My grandpa was the only one from his family to go to the US, and it wasn’t until I was a young adult that I realized how significant that was for him to be here in the US on his own without his family.

Albert and June (Lanting) Havinga

My grandpa was incredibly smart about real estate and investments.  He worked overnight shifts in the bakery to support his family and eventually found a job at the post office.  He was happy with that job because the government job and pension was very important to him.  As someone who lived through a global depression and occupation by Germany during WWII, I can understand why that was so important to him.  He made real estate investments throughout his life and was incredibly good at it.  He sold a property before the big housing crash in 2008 and I was very impressed.  Perhaps I thought that since my grandpa did respectable blue-collar work as an immigrant that he wasn’t savvy.  I’m ashamed that I thought so.  I talked with him about that one day and he told me that he was an FDR democrat because FDR cared about working men like him.  He also told me about his experiences in banking back in ‘the old country’ – it was then that I realized that if he had stayed in the Netherlands, he probably would have done financial investment or real estate development.  But as an immigrant in the US in the 1940s and 50s, that was not an option for him.  I never ever heard him complain about his job (though maybe my mom and her siblings remember differently).  He worked hard and accepted his ‘lot,’ or so it seemed to me, as his granddaughter.

I wish I could have had more conversations with my grandma before she passed, but my grandpa lived well into his late 90s and I had more opportunities to talk with him as an adult and cherished every time.  He told me about how he would read the New York Times every day with a dictionary so that he could look up the words he didn’t know or understand.  He, like everyone else in the 40s, smoked.  The day he found out it was bad for one’s health, he quit, cold turkey.  He never wore white socks or jeans and never grilled.  But he learned how to use a computer in his 70s and played virtual chess with his brothers back in Holland.  He taught me how to play chess and I loved playing with him, even though I wasn’t very good.

He always made us homemade birthday cards on his computer, and they were sweet and silly, which was a softer side to my Grandpa that most people never saw.  I could always make him laugh and sometimes I could even make him laugh hard enough to make his ears turn red.  He had a great laugh where his whole chest heaved up and down and his shoulders shook.

I loved my Grandpa Albert and Grandma June and they loved God, their family, and their friends.  They taught me to care about their experiences and to appreciate different languages, food, cultures, and ideas.  I love their story and how their story became my story, as their granddaughter.  They were so proud of me and understanding their stories made me passionate about studying history. 

Koerselman as a toddler with her grandfather, Albert Havinga

Dr. Rebecca (Vander Molen) Koerselman is an Associate Professor of History Education at Northwestern College, Iowa. A Northwestern College graduate, Dr. Koerselman earned a master’s degree in history and political science from Iowa State University and a doctorate in United States history with an emphasis on gender and religion from Michigan State University.