Bloemendaal, Hilbert J. 1910-2013

BLOEMENDAAL, KOK, SCHUURMANN

Posted By: Wilma J. Vande Berg - volunteer (email)
Date: 5/5/2013 at 13:13:07

Hilbert J. Bloemendaal

June 22, 1910 - May 2, 2013

Mr. Hilbert Bloemendaal, age 102, of Orange City, passed away on Thursday, May 2, 2013, at the Orange City Area Health System Long Term Care Facility.

There will be a memorial service on Monday, May 6, at 2:00pm, at the Calvary Christian Reformed Church in Orange City. The Rev. Aldon Kuiper and the Rev. Paul Bakker will officiate. Interment will be prior to the service at the West Lawn Cemetery in Orange City.

Hilbert John was born on June 22, 1910, on a farm north of Alton, the son of John Henry and Fredrika (Kok) Bloemendaal.

“Hillie”, as it was shortened from Hilbert, had four siblings. In order of age, they are Johanna (Bloemendaal) Rutgers, Dr. John (E. J. G.) Bloemendaal, Margaret (Bloemendaal) Rutgers, and Roy “Bud” Bloemendaal. All of them are deceased, and the only living relative of that generation is Hermina Bloemendaal, who was married to Bud.

Hillis’s parents decided to leave Iowa and move to Lynden, Washington, when he was six months old. His parents were primarily farmers; however, John also dabbled in real estate, both as a purchaser and an agent.

Hillie’s father did not like the farming in Washington and moved back to Iowa when Hillie was about five years old. Hillie went to a one-room school, which was about 1 ½ miles from their house. In those days, cars, buses, or even horses were not an option, so he had to walk. After spending eight years in the one-room school house, he attended the Northwestern Classical Academy in Orange City, which at that time was a high school and has now become the four year Northwestern College. For the first year, Hillie rode a horse to school and kept it in the school stable, which was common at the time. In his second year of school his father bought a car that he and his older brother, John, could take to school.

After graduation from Northwestern, he went to Grundy Center College, in Grundy Center, Iowa, which was a junior college. Hillie doesn’t talk much about the academics, but recalls the most memorable thing about his college experience was to play center in the Grundy Center basketball team. In those days whenever you stopped dribbling, you had to pass the ball to the center, and then the center would pass it on to one of the other players. Back in those days, Hillie was by far the tallest on most teams at 6 feet, 3 inches, and even though he had no basketball experience, they wanted to have him be their center.

After one year, Hillie returned to the Orange City area to work with his father. At approximately twenty years of age, he was given a chance to buy a 217 acre farm. His father had over extended himself and needed to sell the land or risk losing it. Remember this was 1930, the Great Depression. Many people, including some relatives, told him he was crazy to be buying a farm at that time.

Hillie worked the farm for the first ten years with hired help. Sometimes it would be a man who would live in the house and sometimes it would be a couple, so that the wife could help with the chores, laundry, and cooking. The farming at that time was still all done with horses.

At thirty years of age, he married Freda Jula Schuurmann at Orange City. She was a nurse that had worked at The Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado, but had moved to Orange City to work with Dr. Doornink and also to be near her parents. Her father was a minister at a church in Middleburg. Freda continued her nursing career in the Orange City Hospital and Hillie continued to upgrade his farm.

Hillie was a very progressive farmer and put in one of the first silos with an automatic silage unloader and an auger system to take the silage out to the cattle and distribute it in the feeding trough. With this method, he fed approximately 100 head of steers with minimal labor. He also implemented a system that would allow the dropping from chickens to go down into a pit below the floor, so that clean up didn’t have to occur nearly as often. With that system, you only needed to remove the slats and clean twice a year, but what a job.

Hillie was very active in the community, serving on the church consistory and local telephone board (that’s when you had party lines), and he was president of the Alton Farmers Cooperative. Many times he would be gone every night to meetings.

Hillie and Freda had two children, Judith Fay (Bloemendaal) Linam and Frederick Lloyd Bloemendaal. Judy moved to California and married Michael Linam, after graduating from Northwestern College and teaching in Granville, Iowa. In 1965 when Fred went to Calvin College, Hillie and Freda sold the animals and started spending their winters in Arizona. He and Freda spent over thirty years going to Arizona (as snow birds). Hillie enjoyed travel and has been to all fifty states.

Freda passed away on June 27, 2008, in Orange City. They had been living at the Landsmeer Ridge Retirement Center in Orange City. After twelve years at Landsmeer, Hillie transferred to the Orange City Area Health System Long Term Care Facility.

Survivors include his daughter, Judy, of San Bernadino, California; his son and his wife, Fred and Linda (Van Otterloo), of Evergreen, Colorado; two grandsons and their wives, Scott and Darce (Barrett), of Littleton, Colorado; and Todd and Gena (Koning), of Westminster, Colorado; and two great-grandsons, Koen and Derek.

Source: Oolman Funeral Home, Orange City, IA., obit.