Willem Karel Stapel    1907 - 1980


Sources:

Family documents, pictures, memories.

Stapel familycards from civil registries Roosendaal, Tilburg and Bergen op Zoom


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Willem Stapel from Roosendaal went to secondary school in Bergen op Zoom and passed his exam summer 1924 in Breda. We don't know exactly what he did next, but obviously he got a clerical job in Roosendaal as apparent from this picture.

Far right in this picture sits my father Willem Stapel with four collegues in an office, each behind a desk. At the counter on the right they met with their well known customers, otherwise there would have been a window. The compartmented wallcase shows a lot of standard forms. The original photograph is sharp enough to reveal that the calender on the wall is from the Firm Van Leeuwen in Roosendaal and the date: Monday 22 November 1926. I used to think this was an NS (Dutch Railways) office, but Wim applied there November 1929 and was appointed as a permanent worker September 9, 1930, in Tilbury. Perhaps this is a Van Gent & Loos dispatchoffice and Van Leeuwen may have been an important client?




That very year he was stationed in Tilbury where he married Annie Swolfs May 1934. He was relocated 1936 to Bergen op Zoom where they spent the rest of their lives. In the thirties and fourties he studied many a night and gradually climbed the NS carreer ladder to retire as a senior clerk in 1972.

In Breda surgeon and gynaecologist dr. Maurits Cornelius Cartier van Dissel was associated with the Deaconesses' Hospital for thirty years over; to his honour the most southern side street of the Baronie lane was named after him.
November 12, 1929 he passed applicant worker W.K. Stapel as fit for NS service. (picture on the right)



After his probation Willem finally got a permanent appointment by contract dated September 9, 1930. (picture below)




Willem kept a number of salary notes showing that during ten years of depression his wages stayed the same or even went down a little. Still he held himself lucky that he kept his job all those years, because the living was not easy. The pram for his firstborn son Ben cost with 15 guilders more than 1 % of his gross yearly income. And in 1947 shortly after the war a midwife charged 23 guilders for a delivery at home!

At home we put up with his irregular schedules, compensated as they were by the free railway passes which served me well into my study years. I remember the first post war trains passing Bergen op Zoom, sometimes freight trains with passengers sitting on the wagonfloors, their legs dangling out of the opened doors. I can still smell the sulphurous chimney stench penetrating the carriages when winds were unfavourable and I can still feel agonising concussions hurting my eardrums when I remember the airwaves standing between opposite open windows. I never lost my preference for a window seat, even though we no longer sit on varnished plain wooden benches.

Queen Wilhelmina was in Bergen op Zoom at least twice after August 1936, when my parents settled there.
This snap was taken when she visited the Marquisate-festivities held June 4-6, 1938. On that occasion she passed by the railway station in front of Willem Stapel's NS dispatch office, with the Van Gend en Loos loading platform on the right. My father himself is standing far upper left on his terrace.
Queen Wilhelmina was in town again March 16, 1945 to visit the Princess Irene Brigade, after she had returned into our liberated country via Eeden in Zealand-Flanders on the 13th and had visited Walcheren.




N.B. This photo may be added to the collection of the Regional History Archive in Bergen op Zoom. Click "beeldbank", type "Wilhelmina".

Below: Willem Stapel and his wife Annie amidst staff members and family of the Bergen op Zoom railway station at the Van Gend & Loos loading terrace. According to some publications in the Bergen op Zoom Messenger (Bode), under the header "Who knows who?" mid 2006, the photo was taken August 4, 1945 when queen Wilhelmina awarded all railway men a counter, to thank them for their united execution of the 1944 railway strike order.
See also "1944 railwaystrike", Wikipedia.



My sister Ineke knows there has been another picture of this group, in front of a large aeroplane. She noted some details: "There was a wing emblem on the tail with the capitals PH and on the front the number 16441. On the lowerleft rim was written: F.G. Gevaert-Ridax". Some internet research confirms that 16441 is the construction number of a 1944 DC3, later used by the Surinam airways company SLM. Gevaert-Ridax was a type of photographic paper produced before 1945. The photo itself has not yet resurfaced.

Wim and Annie, married 45 years, May 1979

Retired in 1972 Wim focussed on family life and especially on his grandchildren. That certainly included those in Detroit, where he and Annie spent altogether six summerholidays with Ben, Dorothy and their children, starting 1965 until the very year he died. His whole life Wim had enjoyed cycling in the wide landscape surrounding Bergen op Zoom and he continued doing so even more. In a miniature railway yard he recreated that landscape and became even more popular with his grandchildren. Wim died late October 1980, as sudden as his brothers Chris, Marinus and Jan in the year and a half before him.
Speechless we were, but youngest son Ad *) wrote a poem that still sounds like Willem's spoken portrait.
Soon thereafter Annie developed the first symptoms of dementia and lost her phenomenal memory for names and dates. The ABG home, where she was hospitalized, did their utmost to activate her dwindling counsiousness, tireless, well organized and with deep insight. Annies own lack of such qualities was of no consequence any longer. Her youngest daughter Marian wrote a striking requiem how only then she could come nearer to her mother. April 1992 Annie died, peacefully in her sleep.


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*) A.W.K. Stapel also wrote the poem "Polderrozen", about the 78 flood victims in Halsteren, where his wife comes from. Quotes are written on the benches at the monument along the Slikkenburgseweg. February 1, 2013 it was read in whole in the Quirinus church, where Ad unveiled a stand with his poem during the commemoration of the flood victims.

(home = www.cstapel.nl)