The Amsterdam Club owes its
origin to two Dutchmen who had both experienced Rotary in the United
States. During the first World War when Holland was neutral, Jan
van Tyen who had been living in the U.S.A. for some years, became a
member of the RC of Port Arthur, Texas. Whilst he was there, he
received a written request signed by Ches Perry at the Rotary HQ in
Chicago, to ask if he could help take Rotary to The Netherlands.
About the
same time, another Dutchman,
Anton Verkade on a business trip in 1919, visited some American Rotary
Clubs among them the Seymour Club of Indiana. During this visit,
he went to Chicago and there was entertained at
Comely Bank by Paul Harris, who
urged him to try to start a Dutch Rotary Club.
It appears that neither Perry
nor Harris knew of the other's involvement, a situation similar to
that some years earlier in Britain. Luckily, when both were back in
Holland, Jan van Tyen and Anton Verkade contacted each other and
pooled their enthusiasm. They were joined by Bert Snijder and
George Brusse. Bert and George also knew about Rotary in the U.S.A.
and probably had also attended
some of the clubs there.Anton
and the three others held talks about starting Rotary in Amsterdam and
also in Utrecht.
|
There, J. van Dillen and H.A.M.
van Hoffen became actively interested. H.A.M.
van Hoffen moved to Amsterdam and became the fifth member of the new
Amsterdam Club. Throughout most of 1922, the interim club there held
weekly meetings, and the following year, on
10 March 1923, the RC of Amsterdam was chartered. The Dutchmen were
helped by John Bain Taylor of the RC of London who had also been
involved earlier in the formation of a Rotary club in Paris. Anton
Verkade was President of the RC of Amsterdam from the beginning
until 28 April 1925.
During the 1939/45 war, Rotary
was banned by the Germans as it had been in all the other occupied
countries of Europe, and Harris wondered what had happened to
Verkade and the many other Rotarians now prevented by the Germans
from Rotary pursuits. When the Occupation and the war ended in 1945,
the 4 men who had originally brought Rotary to The Netherlands,
restarted the RC of Amsterdam. All former members had to be
screened.
|
