My dear , late grandparents , PIETERNELLA VAN DEN TOL and LEENDERT VAN DER GROEF , at about 70 years of age

# Picture of my grandparents , my late grandfather LEENDERT VAN DER GROEF and my late grandmother PIETERNELLA VAN DEN TOL , here in their (early) seventies - this picture must have been taken somewhere around the year 1960 , in all likelihood in their hometown Middelharnis on the (former) island of Goeree-Overflakkee in the Netherlands .

My grandmother was the daughter of LEENDERT VAN DEN TOL and of FRANCINA OSSEWEIJER and my grandfather was the son of WILLEM VAN DER GROEF and IDA VAN MAASTRIGT .
My grandmother was born in 1891 in the small place of Nieuwe-Tonge on the island of Goeree-Overflakkee in the Netherlands , and my grandfather was born in the year 1888 in that same small place , on that same large island , in that same small country ...
My grandma was born in a family of eight children , and she was the youngest child , and my grandpa was born in a larger family even : he was the eleventh and the last born child of his father Willem ; so like his later wife Pieternella , my grandpa also was the Benjamin within the family - and there was still another thing they had in common : they were both born in poor families , under poor , very poor life conditions alas .....

But they succeeded in growing up , by dog perseverence now and then ..., found one another in their common hometown Nieuwe-Tonge , fell in love and got married , and then immediately moved to an other , bigger place on the island , Middelharnis , where Leendert found regular work and where , in the years to come , all of their six children were born .

All of their children managed to reach adulthood , but the sheer fact that they all six could do so , can certainly be called a small miracle in hindsight : their daughter Ida , in her younger years , survived tuberculosis , their son Wim (my father) , when he was a little child , became so terribly sick one day that the doctor , very much mistakenly (as I am the living proof of that ...) got convinced that my father wouldn't live yet another day .... and then there was son Leendert : he almost drowned when he was just three years of age ..... and finally their daughter Sien : when her mother Pieternella , in the year 1918, was in joyful anticipation of Sien's coming , the health situation of Pieternella rapidly deteriorated and she was diagnosed with .... Spanish flu .....bút , how incredibly (!) , mother and yet unborn daughter both , one way or the other , survived ánd for both of them fortunately , like for my grandfather Leendert , long lifes turned out to be in store .......