I was thinking about May baskets the other day, wondering if many create them anymore.

"Last Christmas I presented our son, Mike, with "MOM'S MEMORIES FOR MIKE", a collection of childhood memories of mine from the 1930's - 1940's.
( I looked through this book when visiting Mike in February - what a wonderful gift! -- cnb)

"I included in it: "Mom made the most beautiful May baskets for my classmates. She would save small boxes (butter and cottage cheese, etc.) and cover them with pastel crepe paper that she gathered on the old pedal sewing machine. We filled them with homemade fudge and penuche.

"When Mike was a child, we created them out of colored construction paper, filled them with candy, and delivered them to his friends. We put a long broomstick across the top of the front and back car seats and hung the handles over it to keep the contents in the baskets. What fun!

"Maybe this is a lost art. I surely hope not!"

-The "old" PENUCHE recipe-

2 c. brown sugar
1/3 c. rich milk or cream
1 T. butter
1 T. vanilla
3/4 c. chopped pecans or walnuts

Boil the brown sugar, milk, and butter in heavy pan,
without stirring, until it reaches the soft ball stage when
tested in cold water.

Remove from stove.  Add nuts and vanilla.  Stir until
creamy.  Pour into buttered pan and cut in desired
pieces when set.

Esther (Maris) Draayom

"You talked about family traditions - how about May Day? We always did May baskets in Iowa, but they've never heard of them in Colorado. We always give May baskets to special friends here."

How about that - they both wrote about the same thing.

Back home in Indiana, when I was growing up,

May Day was one of my favorite "holidays" also. We did it a little differently though. We would gather bouquets of flowers for the neighbor ladies (our flowers were mostly dandelions, violets, and wild flowers - we weren't smart enough to pick the tulips and jonquils from the nearby gardens), hang them on their front doors, ring the doorbells, and then run and hide. We didn't run so far, however, that we couldn't peek out and watch those ladies find their "flowers." Two of my favorite neighbor ladies were Mrs. Richards and Mrs. Smith. Neither one ever expressed disgust at finding weeds hanging from their doorknobs! What nice neighbors. When we moved here to Iowa, I was amazed to find lots of little baskets full of candy and popcorn left at our door or in the chubby little hands of my four-year-old son's friends as they delivered their "traditional" May baskets to him. And of course, we were totally unprepared for this outpouring of May Day wishes. We had lived in Charleston, SC, before moving back to the Midwest, and I had dutifully taught Michael the tradition of leaving flowers for the neighbor ladies. They were lucky, however, because flowers bloom earlier in Charleston and Michael had real flowers to leave. But, our neighbors there seemed to be unaware of our Hoosier (or Midwestern) tradition.
( The neighbor kids just left me a May basket with marigolds - of course their parents are Hoosiers.)

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Has anyone ever participated in a Maypole dance? What exactly is done around the Maypole? Should we find a Maypole in June and have someone give a demonstration?

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Graduations

Congratulations Garth!

Mary Jo Hardebeck wrote:
"The enclosed pictures are of my second son, Garth, who was in the Marines boot camp in San Diego. He graduated March 13 - and he's now back in California at Camp Pendleton. He hates the glasses, but everyone had them. He can wear his wire frame ones now when he's off duty."
[ Garth Zimmerman and mother Mary Jo Niemantsverdriet Hardebeck, March 13, 1998.]

[ Garth Zimmerman, Marine Boot Camp Graduation, March 13, 1998.]

Congratulations Joe!

Joe Niemantsverdriet will receive his Masters of School Administration on June 14, from Ohio State University - I think. Anyway, it is a masters' degree in an education field from a university in Ohio! At his point his aunt has not received a graduation announcement and her interpretation is based strictly on deductive reasoning. Joe is a science teacher at Medina High School in Medina (I assume), Ohio.

Congratulations Michael!

Michael Harris will receive his second masters' degree on June 14 from California State University at Hayward. (His mother would dearly love to be there to watch him walk across the stage again, but she will miss that pleasure because he chose to graduate on the same day that she planned as part of our reunion!) This degree will be an M.S. in Counseling Psychology, MFCCPPS.
[Michael S. Harris- taken at last year's graduation. He liked it so well he's doing it again this year! Son of Carolyn N. and Jim Bauer.]

Michael and Jessica will be moving from Berkeley, California, after four years and four degrees, to Kalamazoo, Michigan, in August. They will both be attending Southern Michigan University where he will pursue a PhD and she will study for a masters' degree - both in Counseling Psychology. His mother is overjoyed at having them 1,500 miles closer to "home."

Congratulations Jessica!

Jessica Harris will receive a certificate in Massage Therapy and Health Education from the National Holistic Institute in Berkeley, California.
[ Jessica Moore Harris, taken at last year's graduation from San Francisco State University. She too is doing it again this year! Daughter-in-law of Carolyn N. and Jim Bauer. ]

Congratulations Fabienne!

Fabienne Bauer will receive her AA degree in Office Assistant with an emphasis in Accounting from Marshalltown Community College. She is currently working as manager of Tops Plus, but has resumes ready to send to any interested parties.
[ Fabienne Bauer, daughter of Jim and Carolyn N. Bauer.]

I am sure that there are additional family members graduating this year. Come to the reunion and find out who they are!

Congratulations to all of you unidentified grads! You've all done very well and we are proud of every one of you!

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Spring appears to have finally arrived. Many of you - probably all of you, do not know that my father is a real poetry buff. The combination of spring and my father, brings to mind one of his favorite poems.

Spring is sprung,
The grass is riz.
I wonder where
The birdies is.

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[ Vernon and Karen Crocker.] Vernon Dale Crocker wrote:
"I didn't realize there were Niemantsverdriets this side of the ocean. I guess I am too far removed from the family tree. My mother never kept in contact (as far as I know). She did get news letters from the Kleinjan side on occasions. .. I have worked up a family data sheet. ( Thank you, Vernon - cnb) I hope it helps your records. The age of PC Computers has revolutionized many things in the information world. It is kind of sad that our previous generations didn't keep in closer contact more than they did but without our present technology it would have been difficult.

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It's a small world. This week I received a letter from Bob and Nancy Friesz Lange. Nancy included family group sheets for Bob and herself and additional ones for all of their children. As I glanced over them, I noticed that their son-in-law was born in Lafayette County, MO. That caught my eye, having been born in Lafayette, IN. You can imagine my astonishment when I got to the page for their last child, Thomas, and saw that his current address is 1212 King Street in Lafayette, IN! That isn't very far from my parents home - and must be very close to where my fifth grade teacher, Miss Beaver, lived. Thomas is a Lutheran clergyman at St. James Lutheran Church. I couldn't resist calling him and telling him about all of those Niemantsverdriet cousins lurking around Lafayette! You will notice the addresses for the Lange clan on the attached page. Bob and Nancy will be joining us in Pella in June.

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Who started us out on this reunion stuff anyway?

Leona Braafhart was the instigator and organizer of the first ever Niemantsverdriet Reunion in America. We owe a lot to Leona's interest in family history. So exactly who is Leona? The following is excerpted from some of Leona's writings about her life.

Leona Vanita Witzenburg was born four miles west of Pella on highway 163 -- first place on the south side of the highway across the four mile railroad crossing, on April 28, 1917. She received her Bachelor of School Music Degree from Morningside College in 1941. She did some graduate work at Columbia Univsity in 1943. In 1955, she received her Master of Music Education from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.

Leona taught in the Auburn Independent School at Auborn, Iowa, the Galva Consolidated School, Galva, Iowa, Casa Grande Public School system in Phoenix, and in the Paradise Valley area of Phoenix, Arizona. She was also secretary of the Music Research Facility in the Department of Music at the Arizona State University in Tempe. She has written a musical operetta based on a story in the fifth grade readers and music books entitled "King Stilts." She has appeared in solo recitals for flute and piano and has appeared in many radio and television programs - including broadcasting from WHO radio in a Dutch band.

Leona retired from music in 1968 and took part-time jobs of various nature so she could be home to care for her mother. Following her mother's death in 1969, she went to California and worked in a heath food store in downtown Los Angeles. She returned to Iowa to be married to Henry Braafhart in the famous "Little Brown Church" in Nashua, Iowa on November 2, 1972.

Henry had been born in the Netherlands and came to the US at the age of 19 in 1921 to work for Leona's father. Leona started school in 1923, and Henry made arrangements with the teacher to join her so he could learn the English language. In the winter when the snow was deep, he used to pick her up and carry her piggy back, on his shoulders, to school. He had been a farmer in various parts of Iowa prior to being widowed in 1966.

Together, Leona and Henry became celebrities for their bicycle rides across Iowa with the Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI - now in it's 26th year.) They both rode, but it was really Henry who was the celebrity because of his age. They appeared in newspapers, on radio, on TV, and Henry was even on cable across the nation. They received letters from friends in California and Indiana who wrote they had seen him on cable. His name was mentioned in the July 1984 Reader's Digest and were written about in the June 1986 issue of The National Geographic Traveler.
( I remember all of this, but at the time had no idea they were related to me! -- cnb)

A couple of years following our first Niemantsverdriet Reunion in America, Leona and Henry moved to a retirement home in Fort Dodge. Henry died there in 1996. This year, following surgery and needing care to be able to leave the hospital, Leona returned to Pella. She is temporarily living with her non-Niemantsverdriet cousins, the Harold Van Zee family.

Leona is a remarkable woman. Thank you, Leona, for bringing our family together in America.

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A Question.

We know that Teunis and Elisabet came to America in 1855, that Arie and Ingetje and father Hendrik came in 1857, and that Leendert and Lena arrived ten years later in 1867. I also know that Teunis lived in Lake Prairie township of Marion County, Iowa in 1856. Arie's family and Hendrik lived in Black Oak township of Mahaska County, Iowa, in 1860 but were living in Richland Township of Mahaska County in 1870. The question . do any of you know the physical location of their homes or farms in those early years - or in fact even in later years? Although Leendert's family was in Iowa in 1870, I was unable to locate them in the census. I have searched through the land records for Marion County and was unable to find any land purchase for any of the Niemantsverdriets in their first thirty or more years in Iowa. (At that time I was unaware that Arie and Hendrik had lived in Mahaska County.) I think that most of us would be interested in locating those early home sites. So, do any of you have information which would help? Can you lead us to a spot in June?

Dutch Treats from http://www.pella.org/recipes.html#cookies

Saucijerbroodjes (Pig in a blanket)

Dough:
1 cup sour cream, 1/4 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1/4 teaspoon
cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon soda, pinch of salt, about 4
cups flour. Mix soda, sour cream and cream of tartar.
Add other ingredients and enough flour to make a soft
dough. Roll out to less than 1/4 inch thick. Cut dough
into 3 inch widths. Take filling size of a walnut and roll
filling in long roll. Cover with dough. Roll with palm of
hand to about 5 inches. Pinch ends shut. Bake at 350
degrees F. about 45 minutes.
Filling:
1 pound hamburger, 1/2 pound sausage, 1/2 cup cracker
crumbs, seasoning to taste. Shift together 2 cups flour, 1
teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons baking powder. Cut in with a
pastry blender: 1/2 cup shortening, into flour mixture.
Add: one beaten egg and 3/4 cup milk/ water. Roll into
thin sheet and cut with small round cutter.

Make a filling of one pound pork sausage, 1/2 pound
ground beef, seasoned, 2 crushed Dutch rusks, 2
Tablespoons cream of mushroom or some other cream
soup. Shape into small rolls, fold each roll into prepared
pastry round and bake 40 minutes at 350 degrees. F.
Yield about 40 saucijsjes.

Mrs. Bert Baron Dutch Treats, 1959 Cookbook.

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Please send your reservations for the reunion as soon as possible. Sweatshirt orders must be placed by mid-May to receive them in time for the reunion. If there are late orders, they will be sent after the reunion. An additional reservation form is included in this mailing. In addition, you should have received - or will soon receive - brochures from Pella and from the state of Iowa.

There are many other places to visit here in Iowa, including:

The Amana Villages, Herbert Hoover birthplace and library, the Bridges of Madison County, the State Capital, the Botanical Center, Adventureland Blank Park Zoo and Living History Farms in Des Moines, Lake Red Rock just outside of Pella, the Knoxville racetrack, Kalona - an Amish community, Boone - the hometown of Mamie Eisenhower and home to the Boone and Scenic Valley Railway, The Little Brown Church, riverboat casinos, and much more.

I hope to see you in June !

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If you have any questions, please call
Carolyn Niemantsverdriet Bauer
at: 641: 752-3264, ( days at 641: 754-2316 )
or e-mail to:
or write to: 2490 248^th Street, Marshalltown, IA 50158