Robert Swierenga was born on February 28, 1888 around midnight in the small village of Ten Post in the municipality of Ten Boer, Groningen Province, which is in the northern Netherlands. Robert's father, Jan, like his grandfather and great-grandfather before him, hauled grain by canal boat. Jan was also a commissioner in grain. The family lived in a rented home immediately adjacent to the Ten Post grain windmill, known as "Olle Widde" (Old White), and across the main road from the Damsterdiep Canal. The grain was shipped on the Canal to the grain market in the provincial capital of Groningen City. Ten Post was surrounded by rich farmlands where the farmers raised grain, mainly wheat and rye, so the mill was always busy. The substantial brick house where the family lived very comfortably was located on the state road at the edge of Ten Post. Today it remains in good repair, but the interior has been gutted to make it into a swank restaurant. The mill in the 1980s was restored, after years of neglect, and it has become a tourist attraction.

The northeastern region of Groningen had been the home of Robert Swierenga's ancestors for at least seven generations, since the 1600s. Over time the family had moved southward closer to the capital city, Stad Groningen. They lived in the following villages: Middelstum (early 1600s), Zandeweer (late 1600s-mid 1700s), Minkeweer (late 1700s), Huizinge (1750s-1760s), Oldenzijl (1790s-1809), Stedum (1780s-1830s), Lellens (1840s-1870s), and Kroddeburen, a hamlet one half mile northwest of Ten Post (1880s-1893), from which Jan Swierenga and family emigrated to Chicago in 1893.

The Swierenga men over the centuries worked as farm laborers, farmer operators, and in the last three generations in the nineteenth century as grain commissioners and canal bargemen, hauling wheat and other grains to the market in Stad Groningen. The wheat producing region of Groningen and Friesland suffered a severe depression in the 1880s, due to falling prices in world markets from the glut of new production on the rich American and Canadian prairies. The agricultural crisis forced Dutch farmers to mechanize and consolidate land holdings in order to compete with North American growers. Farm laborers and small farmers were cast off in the tens of thousands and emigration to America offered the best long-term opportunity.

Robert Swierenga's heritage is a goodly one. His descendants were a humble, peasant folk of Reformed religious persuasion who devoted themselves to family and faith. They quite frequently married cousins and even in-laws, which suggests that the clan shared a social life together. Until the nineteenth century they belonged to the Hervormde (Reformed) Church, but after the spiritual revival in the Netherlands in the 1830s, known as the Afscheiding or Secession, some joined the resulting Christian Seceder Church and later its daughter, the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk (Christian Reformed Church), in which the men served as elders and deacons. Robert's father Jan's family transferred from the Hervormde Church to the Christelijke Gereformeerde Church in 1876, probably at Ten Boer, since the church in Ten Post has no record of the family.

In 1893, when Robert was five years old, his parents, Jan and Katrijn nee Koning, decided to emigrate to Chicago with their eight children. The family originally had nine children, but sometime before emigrating, their third son Hendrikus, who was two years older than Robert, died in childhood. The precipitating event was a financial blow caused by a canal shipping accident. Daughter Hillechien (Alice) Miedema of Des Plaines, Illinois recalled the tragedy in the early 1930s. While hauling a full load of wheat to the Groningen grain market, Jan had to pass through a sluis or lock on the Damsterdiep Canal. He followed the usual procedure of tying his barge to the side of the sluis, but failed to allow enough slack line. When the water level in the lock dropped suddenly and unexpectedly, the rope became taut and caused the boat to tip and the entire load, about 20 tons, was soaked and ruined.

This disaster drained Jan financially and he decided to start over in Chicago, where his older brother Barteld and family had emigrated in 1882 and his uncle Friedus had settled in 1867 and was well-established. Barteld agreed to sponsor Jan. This decision to emigrate had a direct bearing on the lives of every descendent. Instead of hauling grain in Groningen, Jan's sons and grandsons became teamsters and produce commissioners in Chicago.

That same year, 1893, seventeen families and eleven single men (116 persons) emigrated to America from the municipality of Ten Boer. Most were farm hands and day laborers headed (in order of importance) for Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Chicago, South Dakota, and Iowa.

The Jan Swierenga family went by canal boat from Groningen to the port city of Rotterdam and probably stayed in an emigrant hotel for a night or two while awaiting passage. Around May 10 or 11, 1893, they boarded the S.S. Veendam, a large passenger steamship of the Netherlands American Steam Navigation Company (a forerunner of the Holland-America Line). The Veendam was en route to New York via the French port of Boulogne, where it took on more passengers. This was the usual route of N.A.S.M. vessels and the complete voyage took about ten days.

The Veendam passenger manifest, which the captain provided to U.S. customs officials at New York harbor according to law, listed the Swierenga family as follows: Jan Swierenga age 46, occupation "shipper," wife Katarina (Katrijn) age 40, and children Kornelia (Kate) 17, Trijntje (Trientje) 15, Hendrik 13, Hiltchie (Hillechien, Alice) 11, Eppe 10, Bouwke (Bouwko) 5, Hendrika 3, and Bartelda 2 months. The family traveled, as did all but the wealthiest immigrants, in steerage class (the cheapest fare), and were assigned to the main deck, compartment 3. They had six pieces of luggage. There were more than 700 passengers aboard, most of whom were Dutch including at least nine fellow Groninger families, and they were heading primarily for places in Michigan, but some stated Paterson or Passaic, New Jersey; Randolph, Wisconsin; Fulton, Illinois; and Orange City, Iowa. A few intended to go to Chicago and to Roseland or Kensington on the far south side of Chicago.

The ship passenger manifest listed Chicago as the intended destination of the Jan Swierenga family. His older brother, Barteld and family, had immigrated there eleven years earlier in 1882. According to family tradition, Barteld had agreed to be Jan's sponsor and had offered to help him find housing and a job. Jan's uncle, Friedus Swierenga, who had immigrated in 1867 (26 years earlier) was also well established in Chicago.

The Windy City was a focal point for Groningers escaping the agricultural depression in the northern Netherlands. For example, the pastor of First Christian Reformed Church, in 1893 told the Christian Intelligencer (April 5 issue) that he expected 75 families to join the congregation that summer. The growing city of Chicago seemed to offer more economic opportunities than Grand Rapids, but as it soon became apparent, Jan and Katrijn must have wondered if they had made the wisest choice.

Problems began from the outset. Already on the ship, Katrijn began feeling ill and never fully recovered. Nothing else is known of experiences en route. The family arrived at the new Ellis Island Reception Center in New York Harbor near the Statue of Liberty which had been opened the year before (1892). All ten members of the family passed the feared medical examination and were permitted to enter the United States. That Katrijn passed the exam was a blessing, because she may have been in the early stages of the incurable disease tuberculosis which if the doctors had detected it would have barred her from entry. The family no doubt left for Chicago by train as soon as possible, taking either the New York Central or the Erie Railroad, both of which linked New York City and Chicago.

As they neared the downtown Chicago terminal, they could see from the train windows the futuristic, gleaming white buildings of the World's Columbia Exposition, which had opened that year on the lake front. The Fair symbolized Chicago's rebirth from the Great Fire of 1871. A bust of a woman with the slogan "I Will, Chicago, 1893" emblazoned across her breast, was chosen by fair officials as the most suitable expression of the Chicago spirit.

Upon arrival in Chicago, the Jan Swierenga family settled among their fellow Groningers in the "Groninger Hoek" (Groningen neighborhood) on the near West Side. Their sponsor, brother Barteld, apparently failed to have a home ready so they had to live temporarily in the basement of their church, the First Christian Reformed Church of Chicago, known popularly as "The Old Fourteenth Street Church," because it was located on 14th Street between Troop and Loomis streets. The church had been purchased from the Presbyterians in 1882 and was razed in 1941 to make space for a federal public housing project. The building stood on the south side of the street exactly in the middle of the block; the address was 523 (1324 new numbering) West 14th St.

Soon Jan found a rat-infested basement flat a few blocks west at 15th Street and Wood Street, which they rented for a short time. The family then rented a house at 692 (1645 new numbering) West 14th Street, between Ashland Avenue and Paulina Streets, two blocks west of church. There they lived until at least 1897, when they moved again a half mile east to 398 (1131 new numbering) West 14th Place, two blocks east of the church. What a contrast these places were to their commodious free-standing, brick home with its large garden in the rural community of Ten Post!

The harsh living conditions and difficult economic times brought on by the financial panic of 1893 and ensuing depression in the years 1893-1897 bore heavily on the family. This was known as the "Cleveland hard times," because Grover Cleveland was president in those years. Jan worked as a laborer, according to the Chicago city directory of 1899, the only directory in which he was listed. He was incorrectly listed as John H. Swieringa; but it is interesting to note that he had Anglicized his given name and took on the middle initial H., after his father Hendrik, in order to distinguish himself from Friedus's son John F. and Barteld's son John B. Although we do not know what kind of work Jan did or if he was self-employed, he was clearly at the bottom of the labor force and suffering from the language barrier as well as culture shock. This lowly position was a far cry from his status as a canal bargeman and grain commissioner in Groningen.

Katrijn and Jan both contracted the feared disease tuberculosis, for which there was no known cure. Katrijn, listed as Katrijn on her death certificate, took sick shortly after their arrival and died of "consumption" on May 5, 1897 only four years after moving to Chicago. Jan, listed as John on his death certificate, became ill in 1896 and followed his wife in death two years later on November 20, 1899. He died of pulmonary tuberculosis, according to the death certificate. At the time he was a laborer and he and the children were living in a rented flat at 398 West 14th Place, where they had moved after his wife's death. Undertaker John Cermak of 604 (1653 new numbering) South Troop Street handled both funerals.

The couple was buried in the original "Dutch section" of the Forest Home Cemetery located west of South Des Plaines Avenue in Forest Park, Illinois, a far western suburb. Katrijn is buried in Lot 201 and Jan in Lot 482, both in Section HL, which is just west of the Des Plaines River. Katrijn's grave is unmarked, but Jan's has a headstone erected in 1995 by grandsons and cousins Robert and Jack Swierenga in commemoration of the 100 anniversary of the arrival in Chicago of their progenitor. The church deacons likely paid for both funerals and provided the burial plots from a pool of graves donated by the cemetery to the Dutch Reformed churches in exchange for their pastor's endorsement of the cemetery. That is why the graves of Jan and Katrijn are not side by side.

The Forest Home Cemetery was more than ten miles from the "Old West Side" Dutch settlement, far beyond the reach of the street car line, and it required an entire day to make the trip by wagon. A tavern on the corner of Roosevelt Road and Des Plaines Avenue, near the entrance to the cemetery, was the customary noon stopping place after the committal service at the grave side, before the long homeward journey. The apparent reason that the Dutch had to travel so far to bury their loved ones was that private city cemeteries were snobbish about selling graves to poor immigrants and the Christian Reformed and Reformed churches in the Dutch neighborhood did not have churchyard cemeteries, as did the Catholics, Lutherans, and other denominations. Forest Home, which had its first interment in 1877, and the adjacent Waldheim (German Masonic) cemetery, which opened in 1873, were willing to accept immigrants, and Forest Home maintained a convenient downtown office at 88 West Washington to transact business. The two cemeteries merged in 1969 as Forest Home Cemetery.

Jan's death left seven orphans, since the oldest daughter Kate (baptized Kornelia), had in 1897 married Nicholas Tillema. The orphans were Catherine or Katie (Trientje) 21 years, Henry (Hendrik) 20 years, Alice (Hillechien) 18 years, Edward (Eppe) 16 years, Robert (Bouwko) 11 years, Rika (Hendrika) 9 years, and Tillie (Bartelda) 6 years.

According to Robert's oldest son, John R. Swierenga (my father), when Jan died, the younger orphans moved into the parsonage of the First Christian Reformed Church, which was vacant at the time, and their sister Alice, aged 18 years, cared for them. They lived in the parsonage for several months. Jan's older brother Barteld had become the church janitor in 1894, after working for years as a laborer and then a chairmaker. The job included free housing for the family on the church property. The older sister Catherine married John Nienhuis in 1902 (she died of T.B. six months later in 1903).

When the children had to vacate the parsonage, they were taken in by their oldest married sister, Kate and Nick Tillema, who lived on a small farm in West Town (now Maywood), at 26th Avenue and Madison Street--the exact address (old numbering) was 2647 West Madison Street. On June 14, 1900, when the U.S. census marshal visited the farm on his appointed rounds, he reported a household of eleven: Nicholas Tillema, age 32, a market gardener on a rented farm, wife Katie 24, son John l, daughter Aggte 8 months, and the in-laws Katie 21, Henry 20, Alice 18, Eddie 17, Robert 12, Henrietta (Rika) 10, and Tillie 7. Katie, Henry, and Eddie were working on the farm; Alice worked for a cutlery company; and Robert, Henrietta, and Tillie were in school. Later the Tillemas rented a farm in Bellwood at Mannheim Road and Madison Street.

Henry and Edward first, and then Robert, subsequently went back to Chicago. Robert worked as a teamster delivering fresh milk from house to house with a horse and wagon. He lived with Alice, now a widow since her husband, Henry (Hendrik) Dykema, had died shortly after their marriage. Alice lived temporarily in the vacant parsonage of the Douglas Park Christian Reformed Church located immediately north of the church at 1333 South Harding Avenue, where she had the job of cleaning the church. When Alice remarried Keimpe Miedema, a farmer, and moved to the western suburbs, Robert went to live with Alice's first husband's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Klaas Dykema. Alice took in her youngest sister Tillie, who at age 17 was living with the Miedemas in 1910.

The Dykemas were charter members of the Douglas Park Church and had a warm Christian home, as Robert's son John recalls. They lived first at 173 (311 new numbering) West 22nd Street and then at 1315 West 40th Court. The family had suffered much; their son Henry died early and a younger teenage son left home and was never heard from again. Robert was treated as a son and remained with the Dykemas until his marriage.

Robert's early work record is not complete. From about age 17 to 19 he worked for the Haywood-Wakefield Company at 2600 West Arthington Street, a manufacturer of wicker furniture and baskets. Then around age 20 (1908 or 1909) he bought his own horse and wagon and delivered coffee beans in bulk sacks to retail stores and wholesale outlets. "Be your own boss" was his adage. Perhaps he worked for the canned milk company and delivered door to door before buying his own horse and wagon. From coffee beans, Robert began delivering fresh fruit and vegetables from the Chicago farmers' market and commission houses on South Water Street to retail grocery stores in Chicago. There is also a photograph of unknown date showing Robert and his oldest brother Henry as teamsters hauling large limestone slabs. Robert's son, John, recalls that his father and uncle were hauling the rock from a quarry at South 39th Street and Halsted Street to the lake front for the construction of breakwaters and retaining walls. This indicates that Robert and his brother were general teamsters. Indeed, the 1910 census reports Henry Swierenga's occupation as a self-employed teamster; the 1910 Chicago City Directory simply lists him as a driver. Henry and his wife Mary were then living in a rented home at 2821 West Twentieth Street on the southwest side.

&#Eventually, around 1914 or 1915, Robert with his older brother Ed, who also had a fruit and vegetable route, together opened a produce commission house on West Randolph Street. In 1922 or 1923 Louis and Henry Smit of the Archer Avenue Reformed Church, who had their own fruit and vegetable routes, became partners until 1928 or 1929. The Chicago City Directory of 1928 listed the firm as Smit & Swierenga Bros. At first, Swierenga Bros was located in a three-story building at 937-939 West Randolph. Later, around 1925, they moved next door to 943 West Randolph Street, when a new building was constructed on the site. The essential equipment was a big walk-in refrigerated cooler in the rear of the main store. The egg candling operation was on the second floor.

An advertisement of the firm on a promotional thermometer from the 1940s reads as follows: "Swierenga Bros, Wholesale Butter, Eggs, and Cheese, Fruits and Vegetables. 943 West Randolph Street, Chicago, phone Monroe 2374-2680. Many store keepers came to the Swierenga Bros warehouse to buy and pick up produce. Some merchants came from as far as Elgin, Aurora, and Fox River Grove, which communities were 20 to 35 west of Chicago. Retail grocers, Stanley Totura of Fox River Grove, and Edward Vinicky of Elgin were the firm's largest customers (see Swierenga Bros warehouse photograph). The partners each owned a team and wagon and the horses were kept in a barn at the rear of Robert's home at 1404 South Kedvale Avenue. Once around 1927 or 1928 the wooden barn caught fire at midday from sparks that escaped from a neighbor's burning trash can in the alley. Although the trucks were on the road, drums of oil and hay in the loft fueled the fire. Teenage son John was home, fortunately, so he called the fire department from Barn No. 77 at Roosevelt Road and Komensky Avenue four blocks away, and the firemen saved half of the structure, although the doors, roof, and back were destroyed. Robert had it rebuilt as study as ever.

Edward with his wife Effie and family lived nearby at 1320 South Keeler Avenue. Both houses are now gone. Soon the firm boasted a 1916 Available truck (or King-Zeitler, which was bought out by Available, a Chicago Company), as pictured in the photograph below. Robert made deliveries every day while Ed remained in the store. The merchants ordered by phone or placed new orders when they received their deliveries. Perishables not sold by closing time on Saturday noon were brought home by the partners for family eating or canning.

The central city that Robert and the other Swierenga men crisscrossed as teamsters was congested, bustling, dangerous, and noisy. Streetcar accidents were commonplace. Citizens complained about the smoke pouring from coal furnaces and the locomotives of thousands of trains that converged on the city every day. Street vendors, clanging streetcar bells, the whirring of industrial machinery, and the crush of humanity on the sidewalks added to the din. Street vendors literally choked the sidewalks, and mud, horse manure, and trash cluttered the streets. Debris and building materials lay everywhere from the frenzied pace of building construction. Slowly, Chicago cleaned up its act, prompted by Daniel C. Burnham's Plan of 1909 which created a lake front park and completely revamped the central city.

To help out in the Swierenga Bros store as business volume increased, Ed and Rob hired a salesman Mike Venterelli, a second-generation Italian (see photograph of Swierenga Bros warehouse below). This was a wise decision, since Italian-Americans dominated the Chicago wholesale food provision business and Italian neighborhoods dotted the near west side of Chicago. Mike Venterelli eventually joined the firm as a full (one-third) partner and continued with Swierenga Bros for 45 years until it ceased business in 1959 with the death of Edward. Robert had already died in 1949. The firm specialized in distributing butter, cheese and eggs in its later years. Between 1939 and 1942, Robert's second son, Ralph, worked behind the counter and also was bookkeeper, until Ralph's older brother John R. persuaded him to come to work for him as a driver in his trucking business. Edward's sons Joe and John E. also worked for the company for five or six years--Joe in the office and John E. on the truck. Edward's married daughter, Kathryn Rispens, worked in the office.

The Second World War, with its food rationing system, presented the partners with a major moral challenge. That was to resist taking advantage of the lucrative black market for dairy products and eggs. But Robert refused to sell above the government-set price.

Robert's wife's uncle, Omke Groot, also owned a large fruit and vegetable commission house on Randolph Street across the street from Swierenga Bros. Groot bought fruit and vegetables directly from farmers and frequently Swierenga Brothers bought their produce from him. Groot was a very successful merchant. In the 1920s he purchased a luxurious home in the upscale suburb of Oak Park on Lombard Avenue; he was also one of the first in the family to own a car.

On April 27, 1910, Robert at age 22 years married Grace (Gerritdina) Dykhuis (aged 21 years) in the Douglas Park Christian Reformed Church of Chicago. Reverend Cornelius De Leeuw (1876-1963), pastor of the church (1905-1910), officiated. He thereby established one of eight branches of the Jan Swierenga family in America. Grace was born on July 3, 1888, in her parents' home at 692 (1749 new numbering) West 15th Street near Wood Street, which was later a B. & O. Railroad yard. Grace's first grade teacher suggested the name Grace for Gerritdina. This was the customary way that children's Dutch names were Anglicized.

Grace's parents were Roelf (Ralph) Dykhuis (1856-1914) and Hendrika (Henrietta)--known as Rika--Groot (1857-1927) of Baflo, Groningen. The newlyweds had emigrated to Chicago in 1881 with an infant son, taking passage in steerage from Rotterdam on the W.A. Scholten, Captain Y.G. Vis. This vessel was the second oldest fourmaster (a combined sail and steamship) in the fleet of the Netherlands American Steam Navigation Company (later the Holland-America Line), and carried 465 passengers, 370 being Dutch.

The family settled temporarily in the Dutch colony of Holland, Michigan, and then moved to the Groninger Hoek of Chicago, where older brother, Gerrit Dykhuis, and his wife's uncle, Pieter (Peter) Omkes Groot, both lived. The next year his father-in-law Lammert (Lambert) Groot also immigrated from Baflo to Chicago. Peter operated a grocery store on South Fairfield Avenue for many years until his nephew Gerrit bought it in 1889. Therafter he ran a very successful produce commission house at 190 (733 new numbering) West Randolph Street, which had become a major wholesale produce center in Chicago along with the South Water Street market.

Grace's father, Ralph, who had been a day laborer and sailor in the Netherlands, mainly peddled in Chicago with his own horse and wagon, selling straw and hay and later fruit and vegetables to retail grocery stores. Later he was a contractor and carpenter for a time, serving as the general contractor for the building of the Douglas Park Church in 1900. From 1907 to 1911 Ralph ("Grandpa") Dykhuis owned and operated a grocery store and meat market, under the name "R. Dykhuis & Son" (the son was John R., the oldest son), which was located at 1361 (3310 new numbering) West Ogden Avenue between Homan and Spaulding Streets in a rented building (the site is presently a vacant lot). Son Lambert was a salesman and son Peter clerked in the family business. In 1909 John R. Dykhuis opened his own grocery at 2294 (4255 new numbering) West 12th Street. Grandpa Dykhuis sold the store to two of his employees, Bill and Otto Rudolph, and returned to his fruit and vegetable delivering business. Thus, the Swierenga, Dykhuis, and Groot families worked in the food wholesale and retail trade.

Ralph Dykhuis's entrepreneurial skills provided a good income and enabled the family in 1888 to leave their rented home at 692 (1749 new numbering) West 15th Street and purchase their own home at 652 (1327 new numbering) South Turner (now Christiana) Avenue, where they moved in August of 1888 when Gerritdina was 6 weeks old. It was an eleven room cottage that they subsequently enlarged by putting a full basement under it. The space was needed because the couple had 12 children (3 more died in infancy).

After seven children were born, sometime in the early 1890s, Rika first and then Ralph experienced a spiritual renewal or rebirth. In the Netherlands they had been members of the national church, the Hervormde Kerk. In Chicago they joined the First (Fourteenth Street) Christian Reformed Church and had their children baptized by the Reverend J. Riemersma, pastor of the church from 1893 through 1899. Thereafter they tried to live by a strict code of obedience to the Christian faith. In 1899, Ralph Dykhuis, together with his father-in-law Lambert Groot, who had also experienced a spiritual rebirth, helped organize a daughter congregation further west.

Founded on April 19, 1899, the new Douglas Park Christian Reformed Church met temporarily in a store at 1732 West 12th Street (now 3410 West Roosevelt Road) just west of Homan Avenue. On September 29, 1900, the congregation dedicated their new church building at 1329 (old numbering 616) South Harding Avenue near Douglas Park Boulevard, and Ralph served as elder in the first consistory. The building, now numbered 1333 South Harding, was sold in 1927 and became a Jewish synagogue. It currently is a Black church, affiliated with the Church of God, and in the 1980s was completely remodeled by the congregation. Members of both the mother and daughter Dutch congregations were teamsters, truck farmers, craftsmen and home builders, or small shopkeepers. Most hated factory work and wished to be in business for themselves.

In November 1899, the year that the new congregation began, Rev. Reimersma of First Christian Reformed Church was deposed from the ministry after five years at the church. As a result, several families left First Church to join the Douglas Park Church, but it is not known to what extent these troubles in the mother church affected the new congregation. Regardless, the future was West where building lots were larger and cheaper, and the Dutch migration continued. In 1927, the congregation removed to the nearest western suburb of Cicero and built a new church at the southwest corner of 14th Street and 58th Court, where Mr. Klaas Wezeman, an influential grocery merchant in Cicero and church leader, had secured three 50 foot lots.

The church was dedicated in December 1927. For the previous months during the final phase of construction, the congregation worshiped in a commodious hall in a vacant factory in the 1300 block of 55th Court. The congregation took the name Second Christian Reformed Church of Cicero, because it followed its daughter, the First CRC of Cicero. But the subordinate name "Second" rankled and so the body in the 1960s adopted the name of that district of the town, Warren Park. In 1973, after 45 years, the congregation relocated again to Elmhurst, Illinois and changed their name to Faith Christian Reformed Church.

Grace Dykhuis went to the local public school on Sawyer Avenue through the fifth grade and then began doing housework for her Aunt Gertie Groot for three days a week for $1.25. From age 19 until she married at age 21, she helped out in her father's store on Ogden Avenue, but mainly she helped her mother at home. All of the children had to turn over their earnings to their parents except for a small allowance. The Dutch language was spoken in the home and in church. Only the two youngest girls, Anna and Henrietta, graduated from high school. Henrietta was the only child to attend Timothy Christian School, but she transferred to the William Penn public school because father Ralph was dissatisfied that Timothy had only one teacher and an inadequate building.

Another memorable event in the family history is that once a bad storm blew in the windows of their home on Turner Avenue and flood waters stood a foot or more deep in the street and carried away the outdoor privy. In the early years, they kept horses, chickens, and cows in the basement of the home--a practice similar to that in the Netherlands where the home and barn were under one roof--but later they built a separate barn.

In 1907 when Grace was 19 years old, the family sold their home on Turner Avenue and moved into a flat upstairs of the store. Here she was married in 1910. In 1911 or 1912 her parents built a two-story brick home at 1420 South Avers Avenue on the west side, where they lived until their deaths. Grandson John recalls visiting Grandpa and Grandma Dykhuis there and Grandpa Dykhuis cutting his hair.

Grace as a youngster and teenager attended Sunday School, the girls society at church, church choir, and catechism (doctrine) classes. The life of the family clearly revolved around the church and its programs and activities. Each child gave a penny or two in the church offering plate. Sister Ann recalled that "often Ma Dykhuis gave her last penny for the offerings, so she testified, but the Lord always provided and there was always enough to eat and to clothe her children." Ann also wrote: "Mother Dykhuis had a very definite conversion after she had five children. Pa Dykhuis was converted a few weeks after Mother's experience. They did their best to raise their family in the true Christian faith and the Lord heard and answered their prayers because all of the children made confession of faith in their teen years and married Christian men."

Grace's father Ralph Dykhuis died in 1914 at age 57 of a bacterial infection following a mastoid operation. Six children were still at home. Mother Rika died of T.B. perontinitis in 1927 at age 69. The funeral service was held on New Year's Day of 1928 and was the first in the new Second Christian Reformed Church of Cicero. Rika was buried beside her first husband Ralph at Forest Home Cemetery, where all of the Swierenga, Dykhuis, and Groot families are interred.

After Robert and Grace were married in 1910, they lived for a few years in an upstairs flat at 1346 South Crawford Avenue (now Pulaski Road), which was out in the country near the western city limits, at the end of the streetcar line. (The house is today one of the few on the block still standing, since the riots of the 1960s.) Robert earned $15 a week in 1910 and they paid $10 a month rent.

In late 1914 the couple bought their own home at 1404 Kedvale Avenue. The oldest son, John, was born on January 21, 1911 in the upstairs flat on Crawford Avenue. So were the two daughters: Henrietta (born March 8, 1913), and Katherine (born October 17, 1914). The midwife assisting in these births was Mrs. Tinge, a fellow member of the Douglas Park CRC. Ralph (born February 13, 1919), and Henry (born July 16, 1924) were born in the home on Kedvale Avenue. The Kedvale home was also torn down in the 1970s following the riots. In 1915 Robert ordered their first telephone, with the number Lawndale 2052. This expense was undoubtedly justified by his business needs.

The naming pattern of the children exactly followed the traditional Dutch custom. The oldest son, John, was named after his paternal grandfather, Jan Swierenga; the oldest daughter Henrietta, was named after her maternal grandmother, Henrietta Dykhuis nee Groot; the second son, Ralph, bore the name of his maternal grandfather, Ralph Dykhuis; the second daughter, Katherine, was named after her paternal grandmother, Katrijn Koning; and the third son, Henry, carried the name of his paternal uncle, who had died of Bright's disease as a young husband and father of five children. The name also honored his paternal great grandfather, Hindrik Bartelds Swierenga. As was then the custom, none of the children bore second given names.

John was baptized as Jan by Rev. Jacob Manni (1859-1935), pastor of the Douglas Park Christian Reformed Church from 1910 to 1916. He slept on corn husks covered by ticking in a crib made by his grandfather Ralph Dykhuis, who earned extra income by making ticking and cribs. John's crib was covered with oil cloth to keep it dry.

Robert and Grace moved again in the spring of 1934 to a modern brick bungalow at 1534 South 59th Court in Cicero. They had become more affluent by then and wanted to live nearer the church which in 1927 had relocated in Cicero about three blocks from their new home. A fellow church member, Ben Huiner, a building contractor, and his son John, built the house. Ben's wife was a Wierenga and the Wierenga family also emigrated from the area of Ten Post and knew the Swierenga family. The house was first rented by Nicholas Davids, the father of daughter Kathryn's husband, John Davids. All five children married and lived in the greater Chicago area. Until Robert's death in 1949, all but Henry lived within one mile of the Cicero homestead.

Robert Swierenga was active in the church and he took life seriously. In the Douglas Park Church and later Second Cicero Christian Reformed Church, he was elected first as deacon for one three-year term and then as elder seven terms, a total of twenty-five years in the consistory altogether, interspersed as was the custom with one or two year periods of respite. Once he served as vice-president of the consistory. He also led the Men's Society. He never taught Sunday School. Robert always tried to apply his Christian faith in daily life. Often he would quietly bring 100 lb. sacks of potatoes to needy families in the church, especially widows with small children.

Robert and Grace always tried to live their Christian faith in daily life and to maintain a high spiritual level in the home. Often Robert would quietly bring 100 lb. sacks of potatoes to needy families in the church, especially widows with small children. Robert led in prayer before each family meal to thank God for the food and for His loving care. After the evening meal (and noon meal on Sundays) Robert read a passage from the Bible, going verse by verse from Genesis to Revelation, and closed in prayer. He used the Dutch language for devotions until John began school and then for the sake of the children switched to English, which he spoke without an accent. When the children learned to read, they each received a Bible and followed the daily reading, sometimes finishing the last verse. As young teens, the sons especially were taught to pray at the table. Use of the radio in the home was monitored and Christian programming favored.

The Swierenga family was always interested in music. Besides church activities, Robert devoted his spare time to music. He was self-taught. He played an accordion, harmonica, organ, and piano for his own enjoyment, and a cornet in church bands. On Sundays he loved to play the parlor organ (later piano), gather the children around him, and sing simple hymns. He also sang in the church choir, under his brother Edward who was the director for many years. He later sang baritone in the Knickerbocker Male Chorus, a community choir composed largely of Dutch Reformed men. As a cornet player Robert was a charter member of the Excelsior Band, which like the male chorus was drawn from the Christian Reformed community. The band, outfitted in smart uniforms, staged midweek concerts in church auditoriums, played at the summer church Sunday school picnic, and accompanied the popular Sunday evening hymn sings led by the conductor. Occasionally, they provided music for Lake Michigan charter boat excursions of Dutch groups bound for St. Joseph, Michigan and other ports of call. Sons John, Ralph, and Henry likewise sang in the male chorus and played instruments in the band--John on trombone, Ralph on baritone, and Henry on trumpet. Life revolved around church programs and Christian school activities.

For recreation and holidays, the family almost invariably visited relatives who lived on farms near Chicago, such as the family of his sister, Kate Tillema and her husband Nicholas, who had moved to De Motte, Indiana, and his sister Alice Miedema and her husband Keimpe, who rented a farm in Des Plaines, Illinois, at Touhy Road and Wolf Road, near present-day O'Hare International Airport. Evenings were often spent in church activities or in visiting relatives. For many years the Swierenga Reunion on Memorial Day brought the extended family together.

The family's first car was a 1925 Overland sedan with iceinglass curtains, purchased in 1926. Son John learned to drive with this car. The Overland took them to the new church two miles from home in Cicero and to family visits in Berwyn (Rika and Frank Folkens), Stickney (Jans and Tillie Tameling), Des Plaines (Keimpe and Kate Miedema), Engelwood (Ben and Mary Buikema), and elsewhere. In 1930 Robert bought a new Buick, which carried the family twice in the 1930s to Kate and Nick Tillema and other relatives in Corsica and New Holland, South Dakota. Both times Robert fell asleep at the wheel and caused an accident. The first accident, a minor one, occurred when the car went into the ditch and scraped along a barbed wire fence. The second accident was severe enough that Robert made no more long distance auto trips thereafter. On a secondary road near Trip, South Dakota, the wheels sank into the soft gravel shoulder of the road. The car, moving at about 15 mph, first turned on its side and then flipped over on its top. Robert quickly turned off the ignition to prevent a fire and the whole family climbed out of the windows unharmed. The windshield was broken and so they drove back to Chicago with no windshield.

The next car in the family is not recalled and must have had an uneventful life. Next, after World War Two in 1945 or 1946, Robert traded for a new green Pontiac. In 1949, only five months before his death, Robert purchased his last car, a 1949 DeSoto, from John Smit, a Chrysler-DeSoto dealer and member of teh Christian Reformed Church. All of the children learned to drive, but Grace never wished to get behind the wheel.

&#Within the family, Robert was the head and ultimately made the key decisions, although Grace's recommendations and wishes were carefully considered. Grace had the responsibility for housekeeping, shopping for all clothes, shoes, and food, except the groceries that Robert brought home from the store. Grace also ordinarily disciplined the children, although in severe cases Robert meted out punishment with a wide paint stick or a pinch on the arm. But the eldest son, John, recalls that "mother was quicker to use the stick." Once when John was 12 years old he took his father's prized Overland car for an unauthorized joy ride in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, at the corner of the block, he struck Mr. Pribble's parked candy truck and dented the fender of the car. His father was furious and gave John a real tongue-lashing. John's offense was the greater because as the oldest son he carried the greatest obligations and privileges. His place at the dinner table was directly across from father. He was also expected to work to support the family as soon as possible.

Until marriage all earnings of the oldest children were turned over to their parents, but as the family finances improved, the younger children were permitted to retain their earnings. Kathryn worked for the Western Electric Company of Cicero, the city's largest employer, and Etta worked for the nearby Victor Gasket Company of Chicago, located on Roosevelt Road. Henry was the only family member to serve in the armed forces. He was drafted during World War Two and was assigned to the Army Signal Corps in the Pacific theatre from 1942 to 1945. The children married between 22 and 26 years of age except for Henry, who was 30 years at marriage. None of the children received a cash wedding gift or dowry from the folks. They all worked before marriage, including the two daughters, but after marriage the women were expected to be full-time homemakers and mothers.

Robert and Grace did not encourage education or professional careers for their children. Ralph, the second son, was the only child to finish high school, graduating from Chicago Christian High School. Kathryn completed the two-year high school certificate program. John quit high school at age 15, during the tenth grade. "I didn't like school," he recalled, but more importantly, he added, "my Dad said I wasn't going to become a minister or a teacher, so he would not continue to pay Christian school tuition." Until he reached age 16, however, John had to attend "Continuation School" one day per week on Wednesdays. In 1928, when John was 17 years of age, the Chicago City Directory listed him as a clerk at the London and Lancashire Insurance Company, the offices of which were in the Brooks Building, a twelve story building at 223 West Jackson Boulevard.

Robert's goals were, first, to establish a Christian family based on mutual love and respect, and secondly, to achieve a decent standard of living and a nice home in a good neighborhood. He reached both of these goals and reflected on his life with satisfaction before his death. All of his children became professing Christians in the Christian Reformed Church and married Christian wives who were also members.

Robert died of esophageal cancer at age 61 on December 17, 1949. The cancer was likely caused by his taking caustic baking soda and water every day for more than ten years to quell heartburns. He was bedridden at home for two months in great pain and died at the West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park, Illinois, following a two-week hospitalization. After a thronged three-day wake at the Mulder Funeral Home in Cicero, owned by a fellow Hollander and church member George Mulder, and funeral services at the Warren Park Christian Reformed Church, where Robert had worshipped for so many years, his body was interred in the "Dutch section" (Section 75) of the Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.

Grace lived for another 17 years, 15 of which she spent in her home at 1534 South 59th Court. Then early in 1965, due to arteriosclerotic heart disease, she suffered a cerebral thrombosis and was hospitalized for three weeks at the West Suburban Hospital. Her memory was temporarily affected, but she recovered sufficiently to be discharged to the Rest Haven Christian Convalescent Home in Palos Heights, Illinois. Here after thirty months she died on June 11, 1967, following another cerebral thrombosis that had occurred ten days earlier. During these months she improved considerably and was able to move about in a wheelchair. She died only three weeks shy of her 79th birthday. Following a wake at the Mulder Funeral Home and a funeral service on June 14 at the Warren Park Christian Reformed Church, she was buried beside her husband. All of her children survived her. Thirty years later, only sons John and Henry survive. Ralph passed away unexpectedly from heart failure on January 15, 1987, a few weeks before his 68th birthday. He too died in the West Suburban Hospital and was buried in the Forest Home Cemetery near his parents' grave. Kathryn and Henrietta died within a few months of each other in 1996. Both lived at the Saratoga Retirement Home in Downers Grove.

Robert and Grace's children came of age in the 1920s and 1930s and remained within the tight family circle. All resided after marriage within a half mile radius of the parental home in Cicero. Life continued to revolve around church, school, and family. Each family worshiped at the Cicero II church and the children and later the grandchildren participated in Sunday School from age 5 and catechism from age 9 or 10, until joining the church by making public profession of faith at age 18. As teenagers they were active in young men's and young women's societies, which prepared them for the adult societies. Timothy Christian School activities, including drama, musical programs, and sports, took up leisure time. The parents meanwhile were occupied raising funds for the school and setting broad policy at organizational meetings, since the school was owned by a society of parents.

Robert and Grace presented their six weeks old son for baptism at the Douglas Park Church on March 5, 1911 by Rev. Jacob Manni. Six years later he began Sunday school and was enrolled in first grade at Timothy Christian School located three blocks from home at the corner of Tripp Avenue and 13th Street. On reaching the 5th grade he also began attending Saturday morning catechism classes at the church on Harding Avenue four blocks east. Elders Tromp, Bulthuis, and Dykema assisted Pastor John O. Vos as teachers of the graded classes. John graduated from Timothy in 1925 in a class of 16 (see class photo), 7 boys and 9 girls. The school principal was Nicholas Hendrikse. All church and school instruction was in English but worship services continued in Dutch until the late 1920s when English was introduced in the morning service. As a result the oldest children, John, Henriette, and Katherine became fluent in conversational Dutch. They also picked up the Groninger dialect, which was spoken at wider family gatherings with uncles, aunts, and grandparents. Later in life they enjoyed conversing in the "Hollandse taal" with oldtimers, fresh immigrants, and real Netherlanders when traveling in the Old Country, which John and Marie did four times. Henrietta put her language skills to good use after she met and married Paul Tuitman, a 1930 Dutch immigrant, in 1938.

At age 15 John could join the Young Men's Society at Douglas Park Church. He did so eagerly; it was a "very live organization," he noted. He remained active until his marriage at age 23, rising through the officer ranks as secretary, treasurer, vice-president, and president. Elder D.T. Prins was the capable leader and mentor who instructed the young men in Reformed church history and taught them to evaluate all of life from a Calvinist world view. Since John dropped out of school at age 15, the Young Men's Society provided his continuing education. It also ensured valuable social networking with Christian Reformed young men from greater Chicagoland and even beyond the region, because each society was affiliated with the Chicago Chapter of the National League of Reformed Young Men's Societies, which held semiannual city-wide meetings and annual national conventions. Through the society John began lifelong acquaintances with all the Christian Reformed men his age in Chicago and beyond, many of whom he worked with later in life in various organizations.

The Lawndale neighborhood where many Dutch lived was predominantly Russian Jewish and Slavic Catholic, both new immigrant groups like the Dutch. John's childhood friends included Bernie and Samie Bazner who lived across the street. Mrs. Bazner always had a pot of kosher chicken soup simmering on the stove, which John enjoyed sampling. He played softball with both Dutch and Jewish boys on the playgrounds of Bryan Public School and, after a building addition covered the ball field, at the Mason Public School field at 18th Street and Keeler Avenue. John and his Dutch Reformed buddies were fascinated as teenagers to observe Jewish culture and worship, especially the "bedlam" of chanting in the "shule" (synagogue) and the deft skills of the "shuker" in slaughtering chickens at the local butcher shop for 10 cents each. In mere seconds with a sharp knife the shuker slit the throat in such a way as to leave the head dangling but not entirely severed. The kosher chickens were certified as premium in quality and brought higher prices as they hung by their feet on hooks in the shop window.

These neighborhood experiences enabled John to appreciate and understand Jewish ways and thinking, which was a great benefit later in his trucking business when most of his customers were Jews. John won their goodwill by honest dealings and by kibitzing in broken Yiddish about their culture, so that they jokingly called him a "Yiddischer Goy" (Jewish Gentile). Amazingly, Samuel Bazner, John's orthodox Jewish friend, later converted to Christianity at the Nathaniel Institute, the Jewish Mission of the Chicago Christian Reformed churches, located in the 1300 block on Crawford Avenue. His parents disowned him. Bazner now resides in the Elmhurst area near where John R. lived for many years. He married a Dutch Reformed wife, affiliated for a time with the Elmhurst Christian Reformed Church, and shopped at the same Jewel store on York Road where he and John occasionally conversed. In 1987 John observed Samuel trip and fall at the store and subsequently testified in Samuel's successful court suit in the Du Page County courthouse in Wheaton. So after 75 years their paths continue to cross in remarkable ways and they will spend Eternity together.

For recreation John turned to music, since he had an ear for it. At age 10 or 11 he began playing cornet alongside his father in the Excelsior Band, the band of the Douglas Park CRC, taking the second and third scores. He switched to a slide trombone at age 17, which he mastered and played for 60 years. He also learned to play hymns on the piano respectably well and he sang baritone alongside his father in the church choir and later in the Knickerbocker Male Chorus, along with brothers Ralph and Henry, who sang first tenor until the choir disbanded in 1970. John was self taught and learned to read music and master the techniques of the instruments. On trombone he could easily transpose notes for piano accompaniment or shift to any key as needed. Beside the Band, which disbanded in the late 1930s, John used the trombone to lead singing at family reunions, church programs and picnics, Easter sunrise church services, the Helping Hand Gospel Mission on skid row at 848 West Madison Street, and many other places. The Mission was a joint outreach of the Christian Reformed churches of Chicago, and Robert began conducting Sunday evening worship services there once a month in the 1920s. Robert led the singing with his cornet and later John joined him on his trombone. In the 1940s when failing health forced Robert to give up this ministry, John took his place and later introduced his own children to this music ministry. John and Marie encouraged each of their six children to take up wind instruments and piano and organ, and the family regularly played together in the living room following Sunday morning worship and Sunday school. Robert and Grace had established this pattern in the 1920s, as noted above.

John R.'s First Jobs

John's working life began early. At age 10 or 11 he delivered the Chicago Daily News, an afternoon daily with no Sunday edition. John quit high school at age 15, during the tenth grade. "I didn't like school," he recalled, but more importantly, he added, "my Dad said I wasn't going to become a minister or a teacher, so he would not continue to pay Christian school tuition." Until he reached age 16, however, John had to attend "Continuation School" one day per week on Wednesdays. Once that was completed John took a full-time job polishing furniture with pumice at a furniture factory. The work was disagreeable and he quit after some months to become a messenger boy at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works in Cicero. But this job proved even worse because John had to walk through buildings all day where the air was pungent with smoke from burning insulation on electric wires and phone cables. "I hated it." Western Electric was "like a jail," he declared.

John held on for only four or five months until at age 17 in 1927 he found a prized job as an insurance file clerk in downtown Chicago at the Royal Group of London & Lancashire Insurance Company. The firm was located on the tenth floor of the twelve-story Brooks Building at 223 West Jackson Boulevard. John rose within the company to the position of head "map clerk," being responsible for rating fire insurance on residential policies in the three-state region of Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas. The position offered security but only slow upward mobility and a meager salary. John approached his boss early in 1934 and asked for a raise: "I want to get married and I'll need more money," he said, demanding an increase of $20 a week. "You have great potential," the boss replied and offered $5 more, with the admonition to be patient and grow with the company. "No," John replied. "You and I have to part company." He resigned and became a fruit and vegetable peddler.

John Swierenga made public profession of faith in the Second Cicero CRC in 1929 at age 18. He was motivated by a "shattering disaster," a drowning of several close friends, from which he was providentially spared. On Labor Day 1929 he and his best friend Evert Veldman had arranged to take their steady dates, Anna Meyer and Marie Hoekstra, respectively, for an outing to Long Lake north of Chicago where they would join eight other couples from area churches, including Harry Wezeman and the brothers Thomas and Peter Huizenga of Cicero, Cornelius Gelderloos and John Hoving of Chicago, and George Ottenhoff of Hinsdale. The men were between 19 and 23 years old. Marie Hoekstra took sick and canceled her date that morning, much to John's chagrin. He had to stay home and spend the holiday with the family.

Later that evening John learned the awful news that five of the men including Everett Veldman and Harry Wezeman, his classmates at Timothy Christian School for eight years, had drowned when an overloaded boat with an outboard motor capsized after the motor caught in weeds and swamped the boat in 15 feet of water. Six were in a boat designed for four and none could swim. Thos. Huizenga, who was driving the boat, clung to the boat seat until being rescued by his older brother Peter, who was following in a second boat.

Two Chicago newspapers carried the tragedy. The heading of the Chicago Daily Tribune article read: "Boys Tip Boat, Five Drown in Tragic Outing" (Sept. 3, 1929). The bold, black, front page headline of Onze Toekomst cried out: "6 Hollandse Jongelingen op 'Labor Day' Verdronken," (Sept. 4, 1929). The Tribune said witnesses among the 3,000 people at Stanton's Resort enjoying the holiday reported that the men were "frolicking in an overloaded boat,.. standing up and rocking their boat to amuse Miss Helen Brower, 1642 West 14th Place, and Miss Jennie Dekker, 1413 South Ashland Avenue, who were in another boat close by." The editor of Onze Toekomst disputed the frolicking charge. "One of the girls strongly denies [it] ... and we readily believe her. Moreover, all five boys had a good reputation and in some respects exhibited exemplary behavior," said the editor.

The Tribune reported there were ten men and ten women at the Dutch outing, but named only the five victims and the two women. The Onze Toekomst account states that "many young people came too" and identified the seven men noted here plus five women, namely Brower, Dekker, Anna Klem, Bertha Holtrust, and Thomas Huizenga's wife Jennie. Possibly, Peter Huizenga's wife Betty was present too. Dekker, Brower, and Klem had rented a cottage at Long Lake for the prior week, and this was the base for the holiday party.

The disaster traumatized the West Side Dutch Reformed community like few events in the twentieth century, because it impacted many congregations and their interrelated family clans. "We suddenly all feel that same shudder, all our nerves are touched with compassion, and our hearts express real sorrow and sympathy," wrote the editor of Onze Toekomst, as he struggled to find words of comfort. The funerals were the largest and most unforgettable in the history of the churches, and friends who served as pallbearers and indeed that entire generation carried the emotional scars for the rest of their lives. Many feared water and avoided swimming and even boating. Others took their Christian faith more seriously.

The close call with death and loss of his friend Evert certainly had a profound effect on John, one of the pallbearers, who also could not swim. Veldman was a "leader with great potential," John recalled. Even forty years later, in 1989, he testified: "I was moved to see these young men taken out of life so suddenly. It made me aware that I should be more consistent in my Christian life. God had other plans for me. This gave me motivation and incentive."

John met Marie Ann Hoekstra while her father, the Reverend Peter A. Hoekstra (known by colleagues as P.A. or "Pa"--an acronym his wife Alice disliked) served as the first pastor of the newly relocated Second Cicero church, from 1927 to 1940. The family arrived in the new parsonage at 1406 South 58th Court in June. "When she saw me and I saw her, we saw something in each other," John admitted coyly years later. They began dating casually by taking walks on Sunday evening after the church service, as was the custom. After agreeing to "go steady," they sat in church together during the evening worship. This signified to the congregation that the relationship was serious. Following a courtship of about five years, John and Marie were engaged on Christmas day 1933 and married in the church on August 8, 1934. Both were 23 years of age and the first in either family to marry. The Great Depression was at its worst in these years and it required much faith to marry and raise a family. John even quit his insurance clerkship after six years to go into business for himself in order to support a family.

The wedding, at which Dad Hoekstra officiated, fell on one of the hot (100+ degrees), humid "dog days" of August. During the traditional congregational singing and wedding sermon, the wedding party sat down on a bench in front of a church full of family and friends. The bridal party included Marie's sister Winifred (bridesmaid), John's sister Henrietta (maid of honor), and John's friends Edward Wezeman (best man and brother of Harry who drowned) and Abe Van Kampen. The reception and program, which followed the wedding and receiving line at church, was held in the decorated basement of the Swierenga home, with Uncle Nick Jongsma as toastmaster. The newlyweds honeymooned for several days at the Wisconsin Dells and then John returned to the vegetable route.

Marie was the oldest child of Peter Andrew Hoekstra (1886-1965) and Alice J. (baptized as Jacoba Alida) Clausing (1885-1993). The paternal bloodline was pure Frisian, but the maternal side had no Dutch blood, it was Prussian, German, and French Huguenot. Peter's parents emigrated in 1888 from the small village of Ee near Dokkum, Friesland, to Roseland, Illinois, where Alice's family, from Warmenhuizen, Noord Holland, had settled in 1873. The fathers of Peter and Alice both worked at the Pullman Car Works, which manufactured the famous railroad palace sleeping cars. Alice Clausing's family was extremely poor and had only a decade earlier joined the Reformed church.

Peter Hoekstra graduated from the University of Chicago and Calvin Theological Seminary, was ordained in the Moline, Michigan CRC, where Marie was born on July 4, 1911, and later served churches in Holland (MI), Paterson (NY), Grand Rapids, Cicero, and Hanford (CA). Marie attended Grand Rapids Christian High School until 1927, when her father accepted a call from the Second Cicero CRC. She finished her education at Chicago Christian High School in 1928 (as a three year graduate of the commercial department) and went to work as an order clerk in the office of the Hurley Machine Company on 54th Street in Cicero, which manufactured Thor washing machines. She continued to date John R. Swierenga and remained active in the church young women's society until marriage.

The newlyweds made their home from 1934 to 1939 in a brick two-flat at 1625 South Austin Boulevard, where they rented the first floor. The two-bedroom home was conveniently located only one half block south of Dad and Mother Swierenga. Robert Peter (Bobby) arrived on June 10, 1935 and a year later Raymond Calvin on July 16, 1936. Both were born at Presbyterian-St Lukes Hospital. Robert was named after both of his grandfathers; but "we just liked the name" Raymond, John explained. Bobby sported a full head of blonde curls while Ray's hair was straight and a little darker. Marie took the boys for almost daily walks to her parents or to John's folks.

Aunts Etta (Henrietta) Swierenga and Evelyn Hoekstra helped as baby sitters and housekeepers. Evelyn, then in high school, came every Saturday to clean the house, wash clothes, and play with her first nephews. In the summer she did the same on Wednesday as well. Marie at first raised the boys according to Dr. Benjamin Spock, following a rigid four hour feeding regimen. But this left Bobby and Ray hungry and fussy, until one day Etta put them on a three hour schedule and to Marie's amazement they were content and slept. Evelyn recalls taking Bobby and Ray to an ice cream parlor on Roosevelt Road and introducing them to the tasty treat for the first time, when she was baby sitting them during the Saturday afternoon wedding of Paul and Etta Tuitman in 1939.

In 1936, shortly after Raymond's birth, the family faced a severe crisis when Bobby, then 18 months, took sick with the dread scarlet fever. Since the disease was highly contagious, the Cicero health department by law quarantined the home. For John to be able to work and Marie to care for the baby, Grandma Hoekstra agreed to be quarantined with Bobby for six weeks while the others moved in with the Swierengas. Again in 1941 scarlet fever struck the third child, Alyce, a toddler of two years, but this time only she was confined to her bedroom. By then sulfa drugs had lessened the scourge.

The birth of Alyce Joanne (named by custom after Grandma Hoekstra) on April 20, 1938, at Presbyterian-St Lukes Hospital pushed the family out of the small flat and into their own home at 1230 South 59th Avenue, just four blocks to the north. In March 1939, the Swierengas paid $4,500 for a two-bedroom, one story bungalow with a narrow side driveway, featuring two concrete strips for car tires, leading to the garage at the rear. They borrowed the $1,500 down payment from both parents but primarily from Dad Hoekstra. Monthly mortgage payments on the land contract from the seller were $30 a month at 5% interest, and real estate taxes totaled $107 a year. It was the only flat-roofed building on the block and faced the McKinley public school.

Before moving in July, John contracted with Peter Tazelaar to remodel the back porch into a third bedroom at a cost of $1,500. Other major renovations in 1939 were a complete new roof and a coal-burning boiler installed by Edward Tazelaar. Edward Van Der Horst wallpapered the rooms and Uncle Jelke (Jake) Nauta remodeled the bathroom. All were fellow church members.

This home served the family for eight years, while three more children were born: Donald John on May 28, 1941 at Presbyterian-St Lukes Hospital, Grace Marlene (named by custom after Grandma Swierenga) on Feb. 24, 1944, and John Robert Jr. on June 11, 1945, both at Loretto Hospital. John weighed only 4 pounds 12 ounces and spent his first ten days in the "premie" ward. The hospital charge was $3 per day! A seventh child, James Lee, was stillborn on July 5, 1949 at West Suburban Hospital. He was a perfectly formed boy of 6 lbs. 7 oz. but the umbilical cord became detached a few moments before birth. "It can't be explained," Marie wrote her family in California. "It was just God's will that it happened." Doctor Henry Wm. Rottschafer had never experienced such a complication, she noted. The undertaker George Mulder, pastor Enno Haan, and John buried the baby at Chapel Hill Gardens in Villa Park. Two years later John purchased six graves at the Forest Home Cemetery, adjacent to those of his parents, and the baby was reburied there. In April, 1957 son Robert's first child, John Robert III, died three days after a premature birth of six weeks and was buried at the foot of the same grave.

By 1946 the 59th Avenue house was too small. It was sold for $9,500 and replaced by a much larger red brick bungalow with full attic and basement, plus a two-car framed garage off the alley, at 1418 South 58th Court, two blocks away. The house, which they purchased in March for $14,500, was one of three adjacent dwellings of the De Boer brothers, Henry, George, and Clarence. Henry sold his home to the Swierengas. The realty firm of Stob, Knol & Huizenga, attorneys, did the legal and abstracting work for De Boer and John had cousin Dick Rispens record his deed. P. Ploegman & Sons movers handled the heavy furniture and appliances for $46.35, including $6 for the piano, which took four men. Ann Kreuger and her unmarried daughter, Marg, were the long-time neighbors on the north side. They had once lived in fashionable River Forest, but had been wiped out by the stock market crash of 1929.

The building stood just six houses south of the Cicero II church and the parsonage where Marie had lived for eight years before her marriage. This spacious home served the active family for twenty-three years, until all the children were married, and it housed boarders and visitors as well. A wide circle of friends enjoyed "coffee and" in the parlor on Sunday evening visits, including among others, Barney and Grace Hoeks, Ray and Minnie Schaafsma, Bernard and Ann Huiner, Richard and Bess Tolsma, pastors Enno and Florence Haan and Fred and Grace Van Houten, and numerous Christian school teachers. Overnight visits by relatives and friends were also a regular occurrence.

For the boys and their friends, the center of activity was the regulation-sized pool table in the basement, that came with the house for an extra $75. The teenagers spent many an evening at that table and on holidays all the men gathered around it for friendly games of "eight ball" and billiards. It was a melancholy day in November 1965 when Dad ran an ad in the Cicero Life newspaper and sold the pool table, which had been such an integral part of growing up. By then all the children were married and the table was subject to damage from periodic sewer flooding in the basement after heavy rains.

The spacious basement also had room for Bob and Ray's HO gauge model train layout on a 4' by 12' table, complete with mountain tunnel, wooden trestle bridge, and several loops of track for both freight and passenger trains, all of which they built from kits. The younger boys, Don and John, had American Flyer and Lionel train sets, and later they built their own rolling stock for the HO layout. As preteens Bob and Ray listened to children's programs on the Spartan radio set. In 1949 the family bought its first phonograph, an RCA Victor console, and began ordering band and choral records. Only in 1951 did John and Marie give in and buy a 19 inch TV, but viewing was strictly monitored.

While the boys had primary responsibility for mopping the basement floor, cleaning windows, etc. home maintenance again was put in the hands of professionals. Painters and decorators Joe Van Denend and Gerrit Peters did the annual spring restoration, Francis Medema did needed electrical work, Edward Wezeman cleaned the carpets, Martin Kingma and brother Henry Swierenga remodeled the kitchen and upstairs respectively, and Ed Tazelaar installed a new Timken Burner oil furnace in 1946, ending forever the soot of the coal bin and carrying out ashes. All were Dutch Reformed.

Marie had her hands full running the household and keeping up the weekly correspondence with the far-flung family, especially the folks in Hanford and later the children in college or married. Marie was the information gatekeeper of the family and a faithful letter writer. She used carbon paper liberally to multiply her letters and enclosed letters from siblings. In 1947 Marie got an Easy washing machine with the spin dry feature, followed the next year by a Thor "Gladiron," the latest invention in ironing. Hanging out clothes became less of a chore in 1951 when they bought a Sears gas dryer, along with a matching washer. John first indulged himself with a window air conditioner in 1955.

Until the opening of the A & P and Jewel supermarkets on Roosevelt Rd., Marie ordered groceries by phone from Vander Ploeg's Market on 57th Court in Cicero, which the owner's son delivered in a special bicycle with a huge basket over a very small front wheel. Groceries were bought from the Italian peddler, Joe Battaglia, who came down the alley in a truck twice weekly. In 1946 John ordered the home delivery of milk, which was brought for the next fifteen years by John Visser, Clarence T. Boerema, and then Peter Buikema. The thirsty family drank over 150 quarts a month by 1951, until the older children went off to college and the milk order declined. John also bought meat in bulk from Jerry Sebesta Market after purchasing a chest freezer in 1953.

Adding to the hubbub of the household was a dog, which Don prevailed on Dad to get, over Marie's protestations, in 1953. Peter Tazelaar was hired to fence in the back yard to contain Trixie, a jet black Manchester terrier, who nonetheless managed to get pregnant. The birth to a litter of puppies in the kitchen closet was a great learning experience for the wide-eyed kids. Trixie also followed the family to church one Sunday evening, went up the stairs into the auditorium full of people, and walked across the pulpit platform where Reverend Haan was sitting just before the service began. This was an unforgettable experience for the children! In 1958 Trixie got lost and they posted a notice to no avail in the Cicero Life newspaper lost and found column "for Dog." Skipper, grey and also a Manchester terrier--Dad's favorite breed, replaced Trixie. He came from a litter of Tuitman's dog and was a nervous animal, no doubt reflecting the busyness of the Swierenga home. Memorable was the time one of the boys gave him a caramel to chew and it stuck to his molars. Watching him struggle vainly to dislodge it was hilarious.

In the home Marie stressed the importance of good reading material. She subscribed to Christian periodicals and books and a smattering of secular ones like Reader's Digest (first ordered in 1942) and the National Geographic. The books were a staple around the Christmas tree, ordered by mail from Baker Book House, Eerdmans, and Zondervan in Grand Rapids. Besides the denominational weekly, The Banner, and Zondervan's Daily Manna, the Swierengas received The Christian Indian featuring the Navaho and Zuni tribes where sister Winifred nursed at Rehobeth Hospital, the children's monthly My Chum, The Chicago Calvinist, a magazine for teens, and in the 1950s U.S. News and World Report, Christianity Today, Torch and Trumpet, and the Chicago-area Reformed monthly, The Illinois Observer, edited by the Reverend Arthur De Kruyter.

For school reports the children relied on the multi-volume encyclopedia, Crolier's Book of Knowledge and its annual supplements, which was purchased in 1948. The newspaper of choice for decades until it went defunct was the Chicago Daily News, delivered through the C. B. Agency on 16th Street and 59th Avenue. All the children worked in their turn delivering newspapers for C. B. owner "Jack the Jew," beginning with Bob and Ray in 1945. Even Alyce and Grace delivered papers, including the Cicero Life, which route Bob and Ray had first.

Physicians who kept the family healthy and treat the colds, bruises, and myopia of the eyes were Drs. William John Yonker, Henry Wm. Rottschafer, and Everett Van Reken (beginning in 1952 after Yonker's retirement). Dentists were John Balk, and after his retirement Leonard Boke, Peter A. Boelens, and William Vennema, Jr. The greatest fear was contracting polio, the scourge of the era. The city swimming pools were often closed during the summer after a severe outbreak. In 1946 John bought the first polio insurance policy covering the family from Continental Casualty Company, and he renewed it until 1956, when polio vaccines became available. Dr. Van Reken gave Don, Grace, and John their first polio vaccination in 1956. Optometrist Peter Bardolph, operating out of the basement of his home on 59th Court, prescribed glasses after 1955, which Yonker had done previously. Rottschafer gave obstetrical care to Marie, except for a female doctor, M. D. Ward, who delivered Grace and John. After 1957 Marie used Florence Haan's gynecologist, Frank M. Fara of Berwyn. Ever since the 1970s West Suburban Hospital physician Marvin Tiesenga, John's former Sunday school pupil at Warren Park CRC, became the family surgeon and internist, and Everett Van Reken's son Philip took over his father's patients.

The family was remarkably healthy. None of the children had any chronic problems, although John as a little boy suffered from severe croup until he outgrew it. Bob and Don were both struck by cars while delivering newspapers. Bob suffered only cuts and bruises while Don had a concussion and broken collar bone. He came to rest a mere 15 inches from the "third rail" of the Douglas Park "El" or elevated stain, which would have electrocuted him. Marie suffered periodic kidney infections as an aftermath of her seven pregnancies and was also prone to colds and bronchitis. In March 1956 she was hospitalized for three days at MacNeal Memorial Hospital in Berwyn for a D & C, and on New Year's eve of the same year she was admitted again for three days after she fell on ice on the front steps of the house and broke her arm.

In March 1956 John suffered a mild heart attack due to stress from his business, and was hospitalized four days at West Suburban. He had long since given up smoking cigarettes, a teenage addiction, and substituted a pipe. This too he now quit. John in March 1967 also fell on the ice and badly bruised his right arm and shoulder, requiring many x-rays and three months of doctoring. In 1969 he suffered a second heart attack and was again admitted to West Suburban Hospital for a week.

&#John and Marie believed in Christian education just as strongly as their parents did, and they willingly sacrificed to pay for it. They also stressed entering one of the helping professions. John did not push any of his four sons into his trucking business, even though all worked for him during college summer vacations. All six children attended Reformed Christian schools from first grade through high school and college. They began at Timothy Christian School in Cicero on 14th Street at 59th Court, then went on to Chicago Christian High in Englewood (Bob and Ray only) and Timothy Christian High, located in the 1200 block of 61st Court. All attended Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Robert, Alyce, and John Jr. earned education degrees and Raymond and Donald had a pre-seminary degrees. Grace finished two years and then completed the RN degree program at Mt. Sinai Nursing School in Chicago.

While Marie had full responsibilities in the household, John concentrated on making a success in the trucking business. In 1934 he earned his last paycheck when he resigned from the insurance company. His father recommended a retail fruit and vegetable route in the western suburbs and provided $1,200 for the down payment on a new Ford truck. John bought produce from Swierenga Bros and other Randolph Street commission houses and peddled door to door in Cicero and Berwyn, going up and down the alleys on alternating days, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in Berwyn and Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in Cicero. He acquired steady customers, sometimes up to ten on a block. While testing the viability of the venture, John put off buying the requisite peddling licenses, $75 in Cicero and $50 in Berwyn, but the police pestered him. After two years of stalling by giving them produce, he finally had to buy the licenses, even though he could see that the business had no future. "The handwriting was on the wall." Small grocers, peddlers, and the commission houses that supplied them could not compete with the new "chain stores" such as Atlantic & Pacific (A&P) and Jewel Tea.

John's most graphic memory of his brief peddling venture was the attempt by one of his competitors, Eddie Azzarello, to steal his truck and merchandise. John was on the second floor back porch with a customer in the 1200 block of 61st Court when Eddie's helper, a "little Italian fellow," jumped in the truck with its motor idling and drove off. John, 200 lbs of solid muscle, saw the truck moving and bolted down the steps jumping over the first floor railing in hot pursuit. Fortunately, the thief had a problem shifting the truck's gear and also a car briefly blocked the alley at the T on its north end behind Murphy Motors Service garage. This allowed John to overtake the truck and catch the man, who he recognized. In blind rage, John yanked the thief out of the cab and beat him badly until the man managed to run away, leaving pieces of his shirt in John's hands. This incident gave John vivid dreams for years and at least once in his sleep he even smashed his fist into the wall above his bed, narrowly missing Marie, as he warded off a thief.

In 1935 John left peddling after signing a contract with the Adams Union Company (located at Taylor and Western Avenue) to haul general freight within the Chicago area for $50 per week. He did this for two years and even though he got an increase to $75 per week, he decided that the amount was too low, considering that he had to pay all the truck maintenance expenses. John mentioned his predicament to his first cousin by marriage, Dick Rispens, who operated an insurance agency, and Dick suggested that John buy his own trucking business. He noted that Clarence Klassens, a fellow church member, wished to sell his run-down business, known as Motorcycle Delivery Service, consisting of fifteen accounts and two decrepit trucks, and a driver with a drinking problem. John and Clarence struck an agreement for $600 on February 1, 1938.

Swierenga sold his Adams Union contract and truck to a fellow Hollander, a Mr. Smith of the Reformed Church, and took over Klassens's company. John ran the business for thirty two years and Dick Rispens handled all his insurance needs on the trucks and cargo. John kept Klassens's 1935 Chevrolet truck and replaced a 1930 junker with a 1936 Chevrolet, laid off the tippler and hired Uncle Ed Swierenga's son Edward (Eddy) for $13 per week, and chose the name Excel Motor Service. To save overhead costs John rented space and had his phone at the office of Standard Cartage Company, owned by Leonard Gorter, another church member, at 612 South Sherman Street in the south "Loop." The office was actually a wooden shack along the side wall of a brick building fronting at 161 West Harrison Street. In August 1940 John first listed the firm in the Chicago "Red Book" or telephone directory for $1.50 a month. Several of the original accounts, such as McCarty Letter Service, Fruit Growers Express and Burlington Refrigerator Express, and Baum Folder, proved to be valuable, but John hustled new customers. He hauled anything that he and the trucks could manage--machinery (for Baum Folder and the Harris-Diebold Company, for example), bolts of woolen goods and garments such as men's suits and women's coats, water coolers (the Morry Blons Company, an account acquired in 1941), and paper products ranging from skids of bulk paper sheets weighing 1000+ pounds to small packages of stationery and advertising signs for city transit buses and trains. The firm also hauled bulk mail such as magazines, catalogs, and documents, placed in large canvas mail sacks, to the central post office on Harrison and Canal Streets. The company declined to carry jewelry and tobacco and alcohol products.

In December of 1940 John hired his brother-in-law Paul Tuitman, who worked in an ice house, but had recently been fired for refusing to work on Sunday. Paul drove for Excel for thirty years until his retirement in 1970 and for many years had primary responsibility for the Fruit Growers Express and Burlington Express accounts. These twin firms provided railroad refrigerator cars with charcoal or kerosene heaters in the winter to keep food products from freezing. The heaters had to be hauled from incoming train yards to storage areas and then trucked as needed to outgoing train yards. It was hard, dirty work in often extremely cold conditions but very lucrative.

In 1941 the State legislature required trucking companies to obtain an operating license or authority from the Illinois Commerce Commission. Dick Rispens wisely helped John write a contract with the broadest possible authority-- the right to haul general commodities within a fifty mile radius of the city center. Fellow churchman, attorney Ben Ottenhoff, recorded the contract with the State agency and registered the name Excel Motor Service for $1. Subsequently, when the number of trucking companies in Chicago exceeded the perceived needs of the market, the ICC sharply restricted the number and authority of new licenses issued. Excel Motor's broad license was grandfathered and became valuable.

Excel Motor made several acquisitions over the years. In 1942 Swierenga paid $350 to Edward Arnold for a 1937 Ford truck and his few accounts, including Wheat Flour and Bauer & Black. He also obtained the lease to Arnold's office at the rear loading dock of the Brooks Building, 223 West Jackson Boulevard, which served as the firm's downtown office until 1970. This was the same building where John had worked as a young man in the insurance company. In November 1942, to handle the growing business, John hired his brother Ralph, who was clerking in the Swierenga Bros store of his father, to drive the red Ford truck for a starting pay of $35 per week. The next acquisition was in January 1950 when Excel bought a one-truck operation for $2,750 from Harold Carr and four accounts, including Harold Mayer, a wholesale clothier.

&As the volume of freight increased rapidly in the prosperous years of the Second World War, John, Ralph, and Paul Tuitman had to hustle all the more. All were subject to military conscription but, fortunately for the company, for various reasons they did not have to serve. Paul and Ralph failed the army's physical exam and were classified 4F. John was granted an exemption (1A status) by proving that he hauled vital materials such as the railroad car heaters. The youngest Swierenga brother, Henry, after his army discharge in January of 1946 also drove for Excel Motor for seven years until taking up carpentry. In 1947 John added a fifth truck, driven in turn by Abel Korringa, Henry Van Kampen, and Paul Zaagman.

In the 1950s the company added trucks for two "steady houses"--Formfit (women's undergarments) and McCarty Letter Service (printing materials). Beginning in 1955 Ray Stuit drove the Formfit truck, whose side panels advertised in gold letters over a royal blue background "Formfit bras and foundations." Leonard Peters, a Lutheran church member, handled the McCarty account. Peters replaced Ralph, who in 1951 took over the management of Monroe Cartage, the trucking company of brother-in-law John Davids, who died of leukemia at 36 years of age, leaving a widow with four children. Following a family conference, it was decided that Ralph should operate the company, which had four trucks and three employees at the time.

At its apex in 1966, Excel Motor had nine vehicles on the street and eight employees; John continued to drive as well. For the first twelve years, until 1951, John hired only fellow Hollanders. Beginning in 1953 his drivers joined the Teamster's union, and he was then pressured to hire out of the union hall. John Kok, Abel Schoonveld, Robert Hoppe, Raymond Rozendal, Ronald Kripner, James Kedge, Sam Cangelosi, and Russell Erffmeyer drove during the 1950s. In the next decade came Bernard Weidenaar, Ralph Trumbell, Stanley Konczal, Abel Van Kampen, Arthur Romero, Ray Mador, and Nich Melone. The trucks were kept for years at the Castle Garage on Roosevelt Rd. and Keeler St. and then at the Harrison St. Garage near Laramie St. in the Austin district. One truck was also kept at the Action Service Station on Roosevelt Rd. and Central Avenue in Cicero.

Beginning in 1953 and for the next fifteen years, John Swierenga hired as summer relief drivers his four sons and a son-in-law during their college years. Robert started driving as a replacement for Uncle Henry in April 1953 and continued through the summer until enrolling at Calvin College in September. He worked every summer through 1959 while in college, graduate school, and teaching. Raymond worked infrequently because he drove for another company, owned by John Evenhouse, during his college vacations. Donald drove during vacations from 1959 to 1966 while attending college, seminary, and law school. John Jr. joined him from 1962 to 1966 while in college. Gary Nyland, Grace's husband, drove in 1966 and 1967, also while in college. Driving was a good paying summer job and solved Excel's need to cover the paid vacations of its regular employees, but it was an ongoing problem to keep the union representatives at bay.

The powerful Chicago teamsters union, I.B.T. Local 705, caused Excel Motor many problems over the years. In an early attempt to sidestep the issue, in 1943 John, Ralph, and Paul joined the Christian Labor Association (CLA), a union based on Reformed principles that rejected the strike weapon. But the Teamster leaders refused to recognize the CLA and demanded that Excel drivers join the secular union. When the men refused, union "goons" threatened to damage their vehicles and even harm them. Finally, in 1953 Tuitman, Peters, and Henry Swierenga reluctantly joined up, as did subsequent new hires. As owner operator, John was not required to be a member. The company thereafter paid monthly health and welfare fees, which despite much waste and fraud provided the drivers with medical and retirement benefits.

The only major trouble came on April 7, 1967 when the Teamsters went out on strike for several weeks. Paul Tuitman and Lenny Peters took a great risk and crossed the picket lines. After a week Bob Hoppe and Ray Stuit also broke ranks, and Sam Cangelosi joined them the third week, but Ray Mador and Nich Melone refused to work until the union settled on April 28th for a whopping 25 cents an hour wage increase, plus a paid birthday holiday. The lost business and increased cost of labor forced John to lay off Melone, the last man hired. The strike left a bitter taste in the mouth and it took some time to restore a spirit of camaraderie among the drivers.

Ralph built Monroe Cartage into a large and successful operation over the next thirty seven years. Like brother John, he was fair and honest in his dealings, but he drove himself harder and bore the pressures of growing the company into a large business with many employees, dozens of tractor trailers and over the road drivers, and a big dock facility. For more than twenty years he paid sister Katherine a weekly stipend from business income, until her children were adults. Then he assumed sole ownership until his death in 1987. Sons Ralph Jr. and Jack now own and operate Monroe Transportation, headquartered in Addison. Paul Tuitman, after his retirement from Excel Motor in 1970, worked part-time for Monroe Cartage for almost twenty years as a janitor and building maintenance man.

Trucking changed in the 1960s. Increasing government regulations and restrictive union work rules and rising wage scales forced small firms to expand or stagnate. This meant finding dependable drivers, buying or leasing more trucks, and securing bigger dock and garage facilities. Also the operating range began to increase dramatically with the relocation of manufacturing plants and offices from the city center to the suburbs. The aggravation of the business produced ulcers, hemorrhoids, and heart attacks. John's family doctor, Everett Van Reken, advised him to sell the business in order to reduce stress, but John put off the decision. After the second heart attack in 1969, Van Reken again urged selling and this time John listened.

When Bernard Mulder, one of brother Ralph's drivers and a fellow church member, expressed an interest in buying Excel Motor, John agreed and the two, with their accountants and advisors, fixed a price of $50,000 to be paid over several years. This included all accounts, nine trucks and equipment, the operating authority, and the nebulous but essential "good will." The sale on May 17, 1970 was traumatic for John. "I felt that the world was caving in, that my life was over," John recalled later. But he never looked back and indeed filled his days for another twenty years with fulfilling Christian volunteer work, vacationing with Marie, and visiting the children and grandchildren.

John's involvement in church leadership began as a teenager in young men's society. After marriage he became a Boys Brigade leader (the church's answer to the Boy Scouts), and taught Sunday school for twenty years, the last five as superintendent. In the mid-1940s the Timothy Christian School Society (the school had relocated from the Lawndale district to Cicero in 1927) elected him to the board. Several of his children attended there. In the early 1950s the society of the Chicago Christian High School, where Bob and Ray attended, elected him to that board. The school, founded in 1918, occupied a modern two-story brick building on the corner of 71st and May streets in a Dutch immigrant neighborhood of Englewood. It served youth of the Christian Reformed churches throughout greater Chicago and Illiana, and to a lesser extent Reformed and other Protestant churches. John's leadership now reached beyond the local church and the West Side.

In the mid-1950s he joined the Trinity Christian College board, which set out to establish a Reformed Christian college for the Chicago area. In 1959 as one of a group of fifteen businessmen known as the Pullman Land Trust, he provided $25,000 (as part of the total cost of $985,000) to buy the Navaho Country Club and golf course in Palos Heights, including the club house and service building, for $1,550 per acre. The associates sold at cost thirty two acres and the buildings to the fledgling college, which opened in 1957 in the remodeled clubhouse. Chicago Christian High School in 1961 purchased at cost fourteen acres and relocated there from Englewood to a new building on the campus completed in 1963. A few years later, the Radio and TV ministry of the Christian Reformed Church, The Back To God Hour, purchased two acres from the College on 127th Street for its studios and offices. John was a member of the Trinity Board of Trustees for its first nine years, but he saw none of his children at the school. Bob and Ray attended Calvin College before Trinity began, and the younger four followed their older siblings. Calvin was also a fully accredited school with a comprehensive curriculum strong in education, music, and theology. In the late 1950s the Warren Park CRC (new name for Second Cicero) elected John as elder. He held two three-year terms, each of which was extended by one year to fill out terms of men who died in office. In these years he led a committee to expand the church building with an $88,000 addition for classrooms. In 1960, Classis Chicago North elected John as one of their two elder delegates to the National Synod in Grand Rapids, where son Raymond, a seminary graduate, was examined as a candidate for the ministry in the CRC denomination. There was one proud and thankful father at Synod that year! From 1969 to 1981 John also served the CRC denominational committee, the Fund for Needy Churches, which allocated church monies to small congregations under guidelines and approval of the national synod. Swierenga chaired the committee for the last six years.

Besides the Navaho syndicate for Trinity Christian College, John served on three site selection committees: for Timothy Christian School, Warren Park CRC, and Rest Haven Christian Convalescent Home. His extensive knowledge of the city and its suburban growth patterns made him an asset. Around 1970 the Christian school decided to relocate further west where most families had moved. John joined a ten-member committee who bought 20 acres for $60,000 on Butterfield Rd. and Prospect St. and eighteen months later sold it at cost to the school society. Around 1972 the Warren Park CRC appointed a site committee to relocate the church in the Elmhurst-Lombard-Villa Park area, which selected property at 1070 South Prospect St. across from the Christian school.

John Swierenga was a member of the Rest Haven board for four three-year terms between 1961 to 1984. He participated in the decision to move the Holland Home from Roseland to a new six-floor facility in South Holland in 1973. In 1980 he helped select the Village Woods facility in Crete (the former Balmoral Inn), and in 1984 was involved in buying Bridgett Manor in Lombard for Rest Haven West, which in 1988 also became the site of the new Saratoga Grove Retirement Home. Sisters Etta Tuitman and husband Paul and Katherine Davids later resided there.

From 1975 to 1989 John filled three consecutive terms on the board of Pine Rest Christian Psychiatric Hospital in Cutlerville, Michigan, representing the Chicago area. He was motivated in part because the children's program of the hospital had helped two mentally-retarded grandsons and a nephew. Also his son-in-law, Dr. Richard Houskamp, was an administrator and counselor there.

The longest ministry was at the Helping Hand Mission at 848 West Madison Street in the heart of Chicago's skid row. From age 18 John accompanied his father to the preaching service and helped lead the singing with his trombone. At his father's death in 1949, John stepped in and conducted the entire service for the next 25 years, until 1975 when the mission closed. John felt called to the ministry with alcoholics because, as he drove his truck in the area, he saw the homeless derelicts hanging around in their desperate condition and was concerned for their bodies and souls. What "tremendous satisfaction" he received when men responded to the call of the Gospel and came forward after the service with tears in their eyes. Marie played the piano for the hymn singing, until daughters Alyce and then Grace took over. Robert and Ray played baritone and trumpet, along with Dad's trombone, until they went off to Calvin College in 1953; Donald and John took their places, also with baritone and trumpet, until they went to Calvin. This family sharing was truly a pleasant time and the men enjoyed the music immensely. In the late 1930s Marie's sister Evelyn also sang at the Mission.

Beside the mission work, John affiliated with the Gideons International in 1964 and faithfully distributed Bibles to hospitals and hotels and New Testaments to high schoolers. Later he helped raise support for the cause by speaking at church services in the western suburbs.

A secular involvement that John enjoyed began in the early 1960s when the officers of the Tri-City Savings and Loan Association of Oak Park (located at the corner of Roosevelt Road and Humphrey Avenue) appointed him to the board. The bank had been founded in the 1920s on the Old West Side by George Ottenhoff. The directors were all fellow church members, including Ben G. Ottenhoff vice-president, Conrad Ottenhoff president, Herman Ottenhoff director; and Maurice Vander Velde as bank manager. In 1976 Tri-City followed the trend of the times and agreed to merge with the larger St. Paul Federal Savings & Loan. John voted against the merger, but the board approved it by a 5-4 vote. The Tri-City board was given a paper portfolio as an "advisory board" to St. Paul's operating board; they no longer approved mortgages or policy changes. John served ten years with Tri-City and eight with St. Paul.

All leisure life revolved around church activities and visiting with the extended family. John and Marie bought their first car, a 1930 Nash, in 1935 for $30. One of John's elderly customers on the fruit and vegetable route, a Mrs. Brown whose husband had recently died, owned the clean four-door sedan. John accepted because the truck was no longer ideal for the growing family. The Nash was small and efficient, but Dad Swierenga did not trust it for out-of-town trips and insisted that John borrow his Buick. In 1940 John replaced the Nash with a 1937 Studebacker, manufactured in South Bend, which he kept for two years. This, like all the Swierenga cars, was a four door sedan. In 1942, in the face of the rising demand for automobiles during the War, John found a pristine 1940 Buick sedan, two-tone green in color with only 26,000 miles, that Stanley Totura, one of his father's customers, was selling for $600. The Swierengas took this substantial car on several long-distance trips, first in 1948 to Uncle Anton and Aunt Ann Schermer in Passaic, NJ, where he pastored a Reformed church. They toured New York City and the Hudson Valley. They also went to Prinsburg, Minnesota, where Aunt Mary Swierenga (widow of Uncle Henry) and her married children lived. This was preparation for the ultimate trip, to California.

In the days before interstate highways, California was a challenging six or seven day venture by car from Chicago. After Grandpa and Grandma Hoekstra moved to Hanford in 1940, regular visits were mandatory. During the war years and gasoline rationing, the train was the only way. In 1941 John and Marie and their three children took the Burlington Zephyr. John and Bobby returned after a week because John could not be away from his business any longer. Marie, Ray, and Alyce stayed another few weeks. En route home John and Bobby spent a Sunday in Denver with Rev. Renze Hooker, a CRC pastor and friend, and they caught the famed Denver Zephyr to Chicago, which was the fastest passenger train in the nation, often running over 100 mph. In 1943 John and Marie returned with Alyce and baby Donald, but left Bob and Ray with the folks. This was in the slow winter season in February or March, when John could get away, and the boys were in school. In 1946 the family went again with the four youngest children, and Paul and Etta took care of Bob and Ray.

The first auto trip to Hanford was in the summer of 1950, following the purchase of a new 1950 Buick sedan with a "straight 8" engine and dynaflow automatic transmission. The dark green car, which cost $2,600 from Robertson Buick Co., came equipped with a metal sun visor but it steered like a tank because it had no power steering. Bob, aged 15 and boasting a just-issued driver's permit, "helped" with the driving. John first gave him the wheel and the responsibility for the safety of the family of eight in Iowa on the two-lane hilly state route 92. Of course, Dad sat in the passenger seat on the proverbial "pins and needles." The narrow 8 foot wide lanes had 6 inch rounded curbs at the edge of the pavement to prevent water from running off and eroding the shoulder. Trucks had to run their outside tires up on the curb to pass one another. Bob's challenge was to hold steady at 50 mph and avoid going up the curb and risk losing control of the car. He succeeded and gained Dad's trust. Each day he drove several hours in the open country. But if the speedometer ever crept past 55 mph, Dad simply said "That's fast enough." Bob often wondered how Dad could read the speedometer even when dozing off. Ray, meanwhile, challenged his brother on the "q t" to "let her roll." Each morning Marie made fried egg sandwiches for the picnic lunch, which also included a liberal supply of plums. Several children cannot look a cold fried egg in the face to this day.

Highlights of the California trips were the national parks and other famous sights along the way, all captured on 8mm colored film with a Kodak movie camera purchased in 1950. The trips also included a stay of several days at the Rehobeth Christian Hospital compound, where Marie's sister Winifred worked as a nurse in the 1940s and 1950s. If no relatives or friends were on the route, the family stayed in tourist cabins; they never camped. John routinely inspected each cabin for cleanliness, especially the bathroom for roaches, and the condition of the beds. It happened quite often that they failed the test and we drove on to try again.

In December 1953 John bought another new car, a 1953 Buick Roadmaster sedan, two-toned green in color. Beside an improved dynaflow transmission, it featured power steering and air conditioning. This was the largest car made by Buick and commemorated the company's 50th year. The list price at Palmer Buick Co. was $3,700, but the 1950 Buick brought $1,700 in trade. Within four days, however, John returned to the dealer and repurchased the '50 Buick for $1,020 for the use of Bob and Ray, after Grandma Swierenga interceded. They used the car to go back and forth to Calvin College and in 1956 Bob was given the car as part of his wedding present. The comfortable Roadmaster made two trips to California in the 1950s, usually by way of Minnesota, South Dakota, and New Mexico. In alternating years John and Marie took the train, preferably the Santa Fe. In 1957 they flew for the first time, on United Airlines.

In 1959 John made the "ultimate decision." He bought a salmon colored 1958 Cadillac Sedan with only 6,597 miles for $4,125. This prestige auto was such a status symbol that John suffered a number of restless nights of sleep after the purchase before he felt comfortable with his decision. The Cadillac provided a smooth ride to California in 1959, but they took the Santa Fe four times in the 1960s. In 1965 John traded the Cadillac at VerHage Motors of Holland, Michigan for a pre-owned 1964 Chrysler Imperial hardtop. He paid $3,900, including $800 in trade, for the powder blue chariot. This classic auto was the finest car John and Marie ever owned and they put 150,000+ miles on it before selling it in perfect condition in 1978. This included several trips to California.

In the 1970s and 1980s, after the children were grown and John had retired, he and Marie continued to ride the Santa Fe, but increasingly they took the plane as prices declined. John preferred to drive and did so every second or third year, giving them the freedom to visit and sightsee along the way. In any case, they went to Hanford annually. The last four cars were a 1975 and 1979 Chrysler, both bought from VerHage Motors, and a 1983 and 1990 Cadillac. Dad frequently drives the 1990 "Caddy" to Grand Rapids, Ohio, and Wisconsin to visit family, but it will be the only one not to see Hanford.

On summer Saturdays and holidays, the clan attended annual family reunions of the Swierengas, Dykhuises, Clausings, and Hoekstras. They also picnicked and swam at lakes north of the city, especially Druce Lake, Bangs Lake, Gages Lake, Long Lake, and Grays Lake. Family ties were strong and outing always included Ralph and Ang and their children Linda, Janice, Butch, Jack, and Jim; Kay Davids and her children John, Jeralyn, Kathy, and Glenn; Paul and Etta Tuitman and their adopted children Bernard and Dorothy, Hank and his wife Ann and their adopted children David, Donna, and Mark; and Great Uncle Lambert and Great Aunt Rika Dykhuis, a childless couple and favorite of the children and grandchildren. The same clan gathered at Grandpa and Grandma Swierenga's home for the Thanksgiving day feast, and weekly after Sunday morning church service for coffee and cookies while the children attended Sunday school.

Many reels of film (now on videotape) chronicle the family travels to the West and to the children in Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, California, and elsewhere. There is extensive coverage of each new grandchild, which eventually numbered twenty three, and of historic and scenic places along the way. John and Marie vacationed four times in western Europe or Holland, twice to Hawaii and Mexico, and once to Alaska by way of the inland passage. They traveled in every one of the fifty states at one time or another.

Before the days of TV, the children regularly went on Saturday mornings by streetcar (fare 5 cents) to the nature adventure films in the auditorium of the Field Natural History Museum on the Lake front. This was the only "movie theater" the children were ever allowed to patronize, since the church condemned theaters, dancing, and card playing (except the game Rook).

Grandma Swierenga and son Henry, who still lived at home, in 1949 were the first to make the controversial decision to buy a TV. The rationale was that there were no children in the household to be morally corrupted or distracted from doing homework. Bob and Ray routinely went over to Grandma's house on Saturday nights to watch Big Ten basketball, which was a special treat. Don later went to watch Walt's Workshop, sponsored by the Edward G. Hines Lumber Company. In June 1951 John and Marie relented and purchased a 19' TV from Voss Radio and Appliance in Cicero for $464, including installation and a one-year service warranty. But the set was closely monitored. Favorite shows were "Ozzie and Harriet," "I Love Lucy," the comics Sid Caesar and Jackie Gleason ("The Honeymooners"), and the polka musician Lawrence Welk. Popcorn was the favorite snack.

After all the children were married and the business sold, John and Marie in July, 1969 sold the home in Cicero and bought a spacious brick ranch home in Elmhurst at 353 East Butterfield Road. They enjoyed the bright airy view, the tree lined yard, and the city park directly across the street. The home was less than a mile from their relocated Cicero church, now called Faith CRC of Elmhurst. The children had to adjust emotionally to the loss of the home, church, and neighborhood of their youth. They experienced the old adage: "You can never go home again."

A highlight of John and Marie's marriage was the very special 50th anniversary dinner in 1984 at the Holland Home retirement center in Crete. All the married children, grandchildren, siblings and spouses, and favored cousins, more than a hundred in number, came for the celebration. The children prepared a program that began with a litany of praise composed from Psalms 136, 128, and 34, all sang their wedding hymn, "Blest the Man that fears Jehovah" (Blue Psalter #270), the dedication hymn, "Happy the Home When God is There," concluding with "Blest be the Tie that Binds our Hearts in Christian Love." Sister Evelyn HetJonk nee Hoekstra read a poem of Helen Steiner Rice, "The Meaning of True Love."

Appropriately, the night was full of instrumental music. A trumpet trio played John's favorite, "Bugler's Holiday" by Leroy Anderson. But the big surprise was the impromptu "Swierenga ensemble" of 28 children and grandchildren playing their instruments--wind, strings, and percussion, under the direction of son-in-law Gary Nyland, a school music teacher. They played Hyfrydol (John's favorite), "Like a River Glorious (Marie's favorite), the Knickerbocker Male chorus theme song "My God How Wonderful Thou Art" and classic "The Love of God," closing with "Now Thank We All Our God" and "Blest Be the tie." After thanking Grandpa and Grandma for their selfless love and devotion, and telling them of our appreciation for modeling a Christian home, they were given an engraved clock as a remembrance. As the oldest son and oldest daughter in their respective families, they sent an example for many.

On one of the vacations to visit family and friends in Florida and attend the wedding of brother Ralph's son James over Christmas 1988, Marie encountered difficulties breathing. She had long suffered from bronchitis and colds, but this was worse. On returning to Chicago she immediately went to the family doctor, Philip Van Reken, who found much fluid around the lungs. Several quarts of fluid was drained by Dr. Marvin Tiesenga, a family friend and surgeon, at the West Suburban Hospital, but the diagnosis was a fatal cancerous tumor on the lining of the lungs, known as mesothelioma. There was no effective treatment for this disease, although Marie was selected for an experimental drug regimen at the University of Chicago Hospitals, which was administered by Dr. Nicholas Vogelsang, a first cousin of Don's wife Mary. The treatments proved futile. Marie accepted her illness with fortitude and was only bedridden the final two days.

Six weeks before the end, she mustered the will to travel by car to Grand Rapids to celebrate her 55th wedding anniversary with all the children and grandchildren at the University Club. This was a bittersweet moment of saying goodbyes and reminiscing with a Godly mother who had lived for her family and trained all of her children "in the way they should go." Sister Win and daughter Grace, both nurses, came to be with Marie the last weeks and sister Evelyn joined them the last week. Hospice nurses were also on hand to provide drugs to ease the breathing difficulties. On Sunday, 36 hours before she died at midnight on September 26, 1989, the children and their spouses all came home. They gathered around the bed and sang favorite hymns, prayed, hugged Mom, and talked with her about seeing Jesus and loved ones in heaven. Hers was a Christian life and death.

John Swierenga made the difficult adjustment of living without his helpmeet. He learned to cook, wash clothes, and do all the necessary chores of housekeeping. He continued to love to drive and regularly visited the children and relatives, going to Michigan at least monthly and flying to California and Ohio. After seven years of living alone, in July 1996, John sold his home and moved into a two-bedroom apartment at Sunset Village, a retirement complex in Jenison, Michigan. He made the adjustment quickly and enjoys the fellowship and being close to five of his children and their families. His health is relatively good for being nearly 87 years of age.

Sources

Buikema, Karen, "History of the Hoekstra Family," typescript, Dec. 8, 1971.

Chicago City Directories, 1880-1920.

Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 3, 1929.

"Chicago," Origins I (Number 2 1983), 10-14.

Cook County Death Records, Courthouse, Chicago.

De Boer, M.G., The Holland-America Line, 1873-1923 (Rotterdam, 1923).

Duis, Perry, Chicago: Creating New Traditions (Chicago, 1976).

Douglas Park Chr. Geref. Gemeente, Chicago, 1899-1924, Vijf en Twintig-Jarig Bestaan (Chicago, 1924).

Dykhuis Family recollections.

First Christian Reformed Church of Chicago, 1867-1942, Seventy- Fifth Anniversary Booklet (Chicago, 1942).

Forest Home Cemetery Company of Chicago, Grave Lot Records and "Forest Home Facts" mimeo.

Genealogy of the Clausing-Kiel Family, typescript by Marie Swierenga.

Interviews, John R. and Marie Swierenga, Paul Tuitman, and Henrietta Vos.

Jan Swierenga Genealogy, compiled by Robert P. Swierenga and Judy Hoffman.

"The Life of Rev. P. A. Hoekstra," typescript, ca. late 1930s.

Mayer, Harold M. and Wade, Richard C., Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (Chicago, 1969).

"Netherlanders in the Chicago Area," Origins, I (Number 1 1983).

Netherlands Emigration Records, The Hague.

Onze Toekomst, Sept. 4, 1929.

Pullman Collection, South Suburban Genealogical & Historical Society, South Holland, MI.

"The Story of Alice J. Clausing Hoekstra," typescript, ca. 1975, as dictated to Evelyn HetJonk.

Swierenga, John R., business and financial records, 1939-1970.

Swierenga Family history and recollections.

U. S. Population Census Schedules, Chicago, 1870,1880,1900,1910.

U. S. Ship Passenger Manifests, 1893, National Archives.

Vanden Bosch, Amry, The Dutch Communities of Chicago (Chicago, 1927).

Warren Park Christian Reformed Church, Golden Anniversary, 1899- 1949 (Chicago, 1949).

Revised December 1997