Classmates assemble at home of Hachikō (fur ball far left) and Alice Tepper Marlin '66 (far right).
Photos by John Tepper Marlin, who sometimes writes about the #ArtBiz with that hashtag...
Wellesley is famed for its alumnae networking, and the Class of 1966 is no slouch in that department.
Wellesley group in front of the Agora gallery.
Margret Carde, Wellesley '66, was one of the artists in the "Life Is But a Dream" Exhibition at the Agora Gallery at 530 West 25th Street. This is near the High Line in the Chelsea area of New York City.
The show opened on May 22 and on Thursday May 24 had a reception for the New York City art community. The show continues through June 12, 2018. The buzz at the gallery during the visit by the Wellesley class visit was voluble. The Thursday evening time slot is popular among the throngs of Chelsea gallery-trippers.
Margret peers out from among a group of
admirers of her art.
The Agora Gallery was founded in 1984 by an artist. It uses an innovative membership approach, allowing newcomers or mid-career artists access to the gallery scene in New York on a cooperative basis.
The membership revenue allows the gallery to require a lower sales commission on art than is currently asked by most upscale gallery owners in New York City.
Alice with Margret, in front of
one of Margret's paintings.
Margret says she creates her ephemeral, pastel-colored scenes inspired by her "emotional experiences and the thrill of viewing open land and sea." After the gallery visit, the class group regrouped for dinner at the Red Cat Café, a block away on Tenth Avenue. Other posts on the Wellesley College Class of 1966: Longhouse Reserve 2015. 50th Reunion 2016. Eclipse 2017.
Ben Boissevain (L), son of the late Thijs
Boissevain. John Tepper Marlin (R),
grandson of Olga Boissevain.
May 29, 2018 – Boissevain family members from the Charlestjes (John Tepper Marlin) and the Jantjes (Ben Boissevain) lines have been talking in East Hampton this Memorial Day weekend about the need for a movie about Wally van Hall in English.
(PS: October 21, 2018–It has happened. The Dutch movie about Wally van Hall is now available from Netflix with dubbed-in English. My wife Alice has watched it and says the dubbing is excellent. If you watch, please send your comments to me – john[at]boissevainbooks.com. It would still be good to have a Hollywood-level feature movie.)
Wally van Hall has become well known in Holland, because of several books about him, a documentary and now a feature film. But he is not known in the English-speaking world, which is a pity. He was a banker and a hero of the Dutch Resistance. It is a great story.
He has been called "The Banker of the the Resistance" and even "The Prime Minister of the Resistance" because Wally not only financed most of the Resistance work but used his financial leverage and personal charm to keep the various groups within the Resistance working together.
The following bio of Wally appears on the Resistance Museum website, no doubt tied in to the new movie in Dutch (English translation of the title: "Banker of the Resistance" or "Resistance Banker") about Wally van Hall. The trailer for the movie is here: https://youtu.be/i7bKkoT3p4I.
The link to the Verzetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) is at the end of this post. For more information, contact teppermarlin [at] aol.com.
L to R: Tilly and Wally van Hall at their Wedding.
WALLY van HALL, 1906-1945. BANKER TO THE RESISTANCE
Sixty-five years after the Liberation of Holland, Walraven (Wally) van Hall has been given a monument.
A bronze tree lies like a fallen giant opposite the Nederlandsche Bank in Amsterdam. In 1945 the young banker was acclaimed as a bridge builder and a leading figure in the Resistance. But the story of Wally van Hall was gradually forgotten.
Wally van Hall – code name Van Tuyl – was a co-founder of the bank of the Resistance, the Nationaal Steunfonds (National Assistance Fund) or NSF. Through illegal loans and a fraud involving millions at the central bank, the Nederlandsche Bank, the NSF was able to distribute over 83 million guilders to victims of the Occupation and countless Resistance groups. This kind of organisation was unique in Europe in the Second World War. Wally was the undisputed leader of the NSF in the west of the Netherlands.
On 27 January 1945 Wally van Hall was arrested by the Germans. He was executed by firing squad in Haarlem on 12 February, three months before the Liberation.
Seaman, banker and father
Wally van Hall grew up in an Amsterdam family of bankers and directors. But he wanted something different. Wally went to sea. He became third mate on the ocean-going trade with NV Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd. In 1929 it was found that his eyesight was not good enough for work at sea. He had to stop peering at the horizon. He went to New York and became a banker after all.
On returning to the Netherlands he married Tilly den Tex, the love of his life. They had three children. In March 1940 he became a partner in the banking house Wed. J. te Veltrup & Zoon. When war broke out the young family were living in Zaandam. Almost every day Wally went to the Amsterdam stock exchange. There he made contacts for his work as the banker of the Resistance.
Running an illegal bank
The NSF was set up in 1943 when ever more money was needed for Resistance groups and to support thousands of people in hiding and other victims of the Occupation.
To keep the money flowing, Wally van Hall argued that in future only large amounts of at least 25,000 guilders should be borrowed. He hoped that this would also reduce the risk of being caught. For this reason he and his brother Gijs devised a system for the intricate web of illegal loans. All loans were administered in code.
On the expenditure side too, where there were the most NSF workers, everything was recorded in detail. Applications for assistance were checked. And all payments were registered, so that after the war they could be accounted for.
The flow of money at the Nationaal Steunfonds
In the course of the war more and more money was needed to fund the Resistance. By May 1945 the NSF – the bank of the Resistance – had distributed over 83 million guilders to Resistance groups and many tens of thousands who needed help.
Hardly anyone knew where all that money came from. Income and expenditure were strictly separated, so that if one was discovered the other would not be endangered. Only Wally van Hall knew everything about both sides of ‘the bank’. Together with his brother Gijs he ran the income department of the NSF, the Disconto Instituut.
Dispersed about the country there were 23 NSF districts, with district heads, cashiers, administrators and collecting clerks. They were mainly concerned with expenditure. All told, some 2,000 workers transported suitcases full of money, brought wage packets to homes, helped Resistance groups or did the bookkeeping.
Leading figures in the NSF
The Nationaal Steunfonds (NSF) was founded in 1943 by Wally van Hall and Iman van den Bosch. They both worked for the Zeemanspot, a fund to help the wives of seamen run by Captain Abraham Philippo of Rotterdam. As the Resistance grew in 1943 and ever more people needed help, Wally van Hall and Iman van van den Bosch decided to extend their assistance.
The leading figures in the NSF were: Wally van Hall, Iman van den Bosch and A.J. Gelderblom. They held weekly meetings in Utrecht. Gijs van Hall played a vital role in the background as the financial adviser. He and his brother raised tens of millions for the NSF.
A monument to Wally
Wally van Hall was arrested by the Germans on 27 January 1945 on Leidsegracht in Amsterdam. At first they did not realise whom they had caught because they were looking for a certain Van Tuyl. But Wally was betrayed while in prison. On 12 February 1945 Wally van Hall was executed by firing squad on Jan Gijzenkade in Haarlem.
In March 1945 the Resistance newspaper Vrije Gedachten published an In Memoriam which described him as "one of the leaders of the Resistance whose authority was unchallenged."
Soon after the Liberation Walraven van Hall was reburied at the memorial cemetery in Bloemendaal. Now, 64 years after the Liberation, a monument to him has been erected on Frederiksplein in Amsterdam. Read more.
After the war
Immediately after the war the process of clearing up all the wartime financial transactions began. Loans to the NSF were repaid by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the substitution of the fake treasury notes was set right.
After the war the NSF – now a foundation – still had 22 million guilders left in cash. This money was used to make financial contributions to the building of the National Monument on the Dam in Amsterdam and to the founding of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. In 1953 the NSF Foundation was dissolved.
Walraven van Hall, also called "the Banker of the Resistance", was one of the greatest Dutch resistance fighters during World War II. With inventiveness …
Hall, Walraven "Wally" van, born 10-02-1906 in Amsterdam into an influential Dutch family, as the third child of the banker Adriaan Floris van Hall and Petronella ...
1945: Walraven van Hall, banker to the Resistance. February 12th, 2019 Headsman. Wally van Hall, the Dutch banker, fraudster, and national hero, was ...
Oct 23, 2018 - Barry Atsma, left, and Jacob Derwig portrayWalraven and Gijs van Hall respectively in 'The Resistance Banker.' (Dutch FilmWorks/via JTA).
Oct 18, 2018 - Actors Barry Atsma, left, and Jacob Derwig play Walraven and Gijs van Hall, respectively, in “The Resistance Banker.” (Dutch FilmWorks).
Sort this monument out after watching the movie of the same name. Located in Frederiksplein Square this fallen life size tree is dedicated to Walraven van Hall. Here is the story of his wife Tilly: http://bit.ly/2BydfB9.
May 25, 2018–The Duchess of Sussex now has a coat of arms, created for her following her marriage to Prince Harry last week. The design was approved by The Queen and Thomas Woodcock, Garter King of Arms and Senior Herald in England.
Meaning The blue (azure) background of the shield represents the Pacific Ocean by the California coast. The two golden (or) rays across the shield are symbolic of the sunshine of The Duchess’s home state and the three quills represent communication and the power of words. Beneath the shield on the grass are golden poppies, California’s state flower, and wintersweet, which grows at Kensington Palace. Members of the Royal Family and their wives have have one of their spouse's Supporters and one relating to themselves. The Supporter relating to The Duchess of Sussex is a songbird with wings elevated as if flying and an open beak, which with the quill represents the power of communication. The Coronet is laid down by a Royal Warrant of 1917 for the sons and daughters of the Heir Apparent. It is composed of two crosses patée, four fleurs-de-lys and two strawberry leaves. The arms of a married woman are shown with those of her husband and the technical term is that they are impaled, meaning placed side by side in the same shield.
Unusual Feature The decision to give Meghan Markle her own coat of arms breaks royal tradition as it is typically given to the father of the bride, but Thomas Markle was unable to give away his daughter at the May 19 wedding because of heart surgery. It also does not reference the Markle family name. (Her sister-in-law Duchess Kate's coat of arms referenced both the Middleton name and Kate's mother Carole's maiden name Goldsmith.
The Garter King of Arms said in summary:
“The Duchess of Sussex took a great interest in the design. Good heraldic design is nearly always simple and the Arms of The Duchess of Sussex stand well beside the historic beauty of the quartered British Royal Arms. Heraldry as a means of identification has flourished in Europe for almost nine hundred years and is associated with both individual people and great corporate bodies such as Cities, Universities and for instance the Livery Companies in the City of London.”
The new owners couldn't wait to take down
the Time Inc. sign. January 31, 2018. (Detail of photo with NY Times story.)
The Beginning of Time Two Yalies, Henry R. Luce and Briton Hadden, were cub reporters at The Baltimore News in 1922.
They pitched a crazy idea for a “news magazine.” It flew. They raised $86,000. They quit their jobs.
On March 3, 1923, they published the first issue of Time: The Weekly News-Magazine. The End of Time Betsy Gleick, senior writer, Time: “[T]he Time Inc. sign [came] down [on January 31, 2018] and the Meredith sign [went] up basically the minute the deal closed. From the outside, the haste struck me as so depressing. Why the race to obliterate a great legacy?”
The Congressman from CD 1 in Suffolk County, New York, was elected in 2014. He has made creating jobs a central part of his program. He said in 2016 he would go to Washington, work with the Tea Party to reduce environmental and other regulations, and "help grow our economy and create more good paying jobs".
How's it going with that, Mr. Zeldin?
Numbers just came out today for the fourth quarter of 2017. They show that Suffolk County ranked 309th out of the 347 largest counties for growth during 2017, fourth quarter compared with the fourth quarter of the previous year.
The growth rate was Point One Percent. That's one-tenth of one percent.
Compare that with Brooklyn (King's County), which grew 41 times as fast, 4.1 percent, and ranked 14th out of the 347 largest counties.
Zeldin has had two terms to prove he can make a difference in job growth. I would say he flunks his own test. He has not helped grow the economy. He has not created more good-paying jobs.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, data released May 23, 2018. www.bls.gov.
May 22, 2018–This day in 1859 was born Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. He was born in Edinburgh, where he grew up and studied medicine (andwhere I was earlier this month).
Doyle is often referred to as "Conan Doyle". But he was baptized at St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh–with "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as his given names and "Doyle" as his surname. Ignatius of Loyola is the anglicized name of the founder of the Jesuit Order. Doyle's second wife was known as Jean Conan Doyle rather than Jean Doyle.
Doyle's parents were both Irish Catholic, though his father was born in England. His mother was the inspiration of his life and she was a great story-teller. Alas, his father, although from a family with some fame in the art world, suffered from alcoholism and in 1864 the family dispersed to different homes in Edinburgh with some respite in 1867 as the family came together again in an inadequate tenement flat. Doyle's father suffered from mental illness later in his life and died in 1893, in Dumfries. Fortunately Doyle's talent was spotted by wealthy uncles and a lodger. He was sent away to school at nine years of age to a school that fed to the Jesuit Stonyhurst College. From there in 1875-76, he was educated at another Jesuit school, Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria. He later rejected the Catholic faith and became an agnostic and mystic.
In 1876-1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, including periods working in different locations in England including Warwickshire and Shropshire. During that time, he studied practical botany and started writing short stories.
His earliest extant fiction was "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine.
His first published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal in 1879. The same year, he published his first academic article, on a poison.
After his graduation from Edinburgh University with a Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1881, he was ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his advanced Doctor of Medicine degree on tabes dorsalis in 1885. He set up a medical practice in Southsea in June 1882, with less than £10 (about $1,500 today) in his pocket. It was not successful, giving Doyle ample time to write fiction. He also wrote several articles denouncing anti-vaccinators. In early 1891, Doyle attempted the study of ophthalmology in Vienna, but his German wasn't up to all the medical terms and he quit.
Returned to London, Doyle opened a small office and consulting room at what is now 2 Upper Wimpole Street. He never had luck with finding patients, giving him the time to develop a story featuring a man named Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson. The novel, A Study in Scarlet, initially had no luck.
Then, to Doyle's initial delight, the book was accepted by Ward Lock & Co. It was 20 November 1886, and the wonderful publisher gave Doyle £25 (about $4,000 today) for all rights. The piece appeared a year later in the Beeton's Christmas Annual and received good reviews in Edinburgh. Holmes said the character was partly based on a former university teacher. Robert Louis Stevenson, also born in Edinburgh, was able, reading the story in Samoa, to recognize that a medical school professor was the basis of the Sherlock character.
A sequel was commissioned, and The Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in February 1890, under agreement with the Ward Lock company. By now, Doyle started to feel exploited by his wonderful publisher and left Ward Lock, sending his stories to the Strand Magazine.
Tired of his creation, Doyle tried to discourage his new publisher from demanding more work and raised his fee for new work to a level intended to send them away. Alas, the new magazine promptly accepted. He therefore became one of the best-paid authors of his era. In December 1893, he went so far as to finish off both Holmes and his arch-enemy Professor Moriarty, sending them both over the Reichenbach Falls to their deaths in "The Final Problem".
The public was outraged.
They cancelled 20,000 subscriptions to the Strand Magazine. He was after a few years prevailed upon to revive Holmes in 1901 in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.
In 1903, Doyle came back to a Holmes short story after a ten-year lapse, with "The Adventure of the Empty House". Doyle explains that Moriarty had indeed fallen to his death, but Holmes wanted privacy and only faked his death. Doyle eventually accumulated 56 short stories—the last published in 1927—and four novels about Holmes. Doyle was knighted for a report he wrote on the Boer War. He showed a deep interest in the supernatural and helped popularize a famous garden fairies hoax of the early 20th century. He died of a heart attack in 1930.
Remembering V-E Day Guest Words | By John Tepper Marlin | [Reposted by Permission]
Charles Miner Jr., World War II bomber pilot, investment banker, and summertime East Hampton resident, died in March at the age of 96. John Tepper Marlin
May 8 will be the 73rd anniversary of V-E Day, when World War II ended in Europe. I am on my way from London to Holland, where the 1945 liberation is celebrated on May 4. That day, I plan to be at the Cemetery of Heroes in Amsterdam to remember my relatives who gave their lives to fighting the monster Adolf Hitler through the Resistance.
East Hampton contributed many fighters to this effort. Some survived World War II with powerful stories. Charles Miner Jr., who died at 96 in March, was a bomber pilot in World War II. When he died, he was one of 480,000 surviving veterans of that war, out of more than 16 million Americans who served.
Charlie was not related to me, but he was extremely helpful to my understanding his grandfather William H. Woodin, who was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first Treasury secretary, and my own family during the war.
As we talked one day, I became interested in his life story. Charlie had to leave Princeton before he graduated to join the Army Air Forces. “I was studying engineering and they wanted engineers, so I was called up,” he told me. “I went to a single-engine flying school, graduated in March 1943, and from there was sent to a sub depot in Charlotte, N.C., where they rebuilt planes that had crashed. I was given the job of test-flying the rebuilt planes before they were returned to their home bases. I got flying time in many types of aircraft.”
While assigned to the base, Charlie married in October 1944 a Southern belle, Mae Hoffman, who was called Maisie. “But just two weeks after we married, I had to report for combat training in two-engine bombers at the Greenville, N.C., Army Air Forces base. We were trained on the B-25 Mitchell bomber. We had three months’ training, doing mock bombing runs over Myrtle Beach at night.”
The B-25 has been described as the most versatile bomber in World War II, named after the air power advocate Gen. Billy Mitchell. Nearly 10,000 of the bombers were built between 1941 and 1945. It was the most heavily armed airplane in the world, used in the historic Doolittle raid over Tokyo in 1942.
“We had a crew of five,” Charlie said. “Besides me, the pilot, we had a co-pilot, bombardier, radio operator, and gunner. Boeing strengthened the plane by adding a gun in its nose, which allowed us to shoot back at targets, but lowered the plane’s maximum speed.”
When was his first combat run? “After my training in Greenville, I was first sent to Corsica to be instructed by the more experienced [Royal Canadian Air Force] and especially [Royal Air Force] pilots who had been flying the B-25. Some of the R.A.F. and Italian pilots were daredevils. They didn’t seem to care whether they lived or died. We had the Mosquito, a laminated-wood plane that could break the sound barrier. The pilots loved it, and they would dive from 5,000 feet. But one day a pilot tried this and one of the wings just came off. The pilot, of course, went straight down with the plane and was killed.”
Miner paused and continued in his jaunty rat-a-tat style (he was a superb joke-teller): “We started flying missions out of Corsica. The Germans were pushed north in the Italian boot, so we relocated closer to the targets, in Fano, on the Adriatic in eastern Italy, about 150 miles south of Venice. My squadron flew 18 missions at 15,000 to 18,000 feet over the Brenner Pass in the Alps between Italy and Austria.”
How did he feel on these missions? Charlie slowed down. “Of course, the Alps were a majestic sight to look down on, but each flight was nerve-racking. We had to stay perfectly in box formation during the bomb run so that the bombardiers could be accurate. We had to keep to it so long as we had more bombs to drop. We could see yellow puffs below as anti-aircraft guns tried to shoot us down, but we were not allowed to take evasive action until our payload was dropped. As soon as we released the last bomb, it was a relief, we were all out of there in every direction, helter-skelter.”
It is easy to visualize Charlie keeping his formation while the flak was flying. His cousin Woody Rowe, in an interview with me, compared Charlie (whom he calls Chas) to his mother, Libby Woodin Rowe. She was a patient mother, although neither of her sons inherited her patience. But Woody told me that Charlie never seemed to be mad at anyone. Asked about it, Charlie thought and said, “I guess you’re right. Disappointed, perhaps, but not angry.”
I asked Charlie whether the anti-aircraft fire found its mark. “Yes,” he said. “We would find out when we returned to the base when a plane and crew were gone. We all paid our respects. But after that, we didn’t talk a whole lot about the ones who were gone. It was just the risk you took.”
Again, Charlie’s usual fast-paced speaking style became slower. He looked at me with the closest I ever saw him get to a tragic expression. “There was one pilot who seemed immortal. He was a major in the Army Air Forces. He finished 50 missions, which meant he could retire and go home. But he wanted to keep flying a couple more times, even though he didn’t have to. On his 51st mission, his plane was hit by flak and he bailed out. I remember seeing his parachute going down over the Alps. If he was lucky, he was rescued by one of the partisans below.”
“Did you ever find out what happened to him?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I never did.” He was silent for what seemed like a long time.
That was a personal moment for me as well, because my Dutch-born uncle Willem J. van Stockum worked hard to put himself in harm’s way. He was a bomber pilot for the R.A.F. and was hit by flak over France on June 10, 1944. I was 2 years old then, so I never got to find out from him what it was like being on the front lines of the air war against Hitler. He was flying with 10 Squadron, one of 126 squadrons serving with the R.A.F.’s Bomber Command. They were bombing a Luftwaffe airfield in Laval, France. His plane was hit by flak.
Bomber Command in World War II recruited 125,000 aircrew, of whom 57,205 were killed. That’s a 46-percent death rate. The queen unveiled a monument in 2012 to the extraordinary bravery of these R.A.F. aircrews.
My uncle Willem, a mathematician who worked in Einstein’s institute in Princeton, understood these numbers. He just had to do something about his country being occupied. His story is told in “Time Bomber” by Robert Wack. His crew of seven and another that came down on the same mission are buried in Laval. I have visited three times, including in 2014, when the French locals erected monuments to the two crews. A survivor of the bombing, of course a child at the time, said that my uncle’s flaming plane steered away from the house where she and her family lived, into an orchard.
This year I went with my wife, Alice, to see for the first time my uncle’s base, R.A.F. Melbourne near York, England. I am grateful to the 10 Squadron Association volunteers who helped us make the visit.
And I am grateful to the late Charlie Miner for helping me understand better what was facing this uncle I never knew. Whatever questions we have about the morality or effectiveness of indiscriminate bombing of civilians in World War II, our appreciation of the bravery of those who looked in the evil face of Hitler’s guns will never be sufficient.
John Tepper Marlin, a regular contributor to the “Guestwords” column, has had a house in Springs since 1981. He is writing a biography of William Woodin and a book about his Dutch relatives’ work in the Resistance.
Postscript: From the May 10 Issue
‘Remembering’
East Hampton
May 3, 2018
Dear David [Editor of the East Hampton Star],
John Tepper Marlin’s “Remembering V-E Day” beautifully conveys the stress, horror, and pride felt by soldiers and their families during World War II.
