Friends Henk Blanke (80) and Klaas Wemmenhove (77) have been working together as a pigeon milk duo for sixty years. They don’t want to know anything about stopping the pigeon sport. “It is still exciting every time they almost come in.”
Klaas Wemmenhove (77) actually had nothing to do with pigeons. From the window of his parental home he saw a loft in the garden at the neighbors, where his neighbor boy was busy with the birds. “But otherwise I didn’t care about it,” says Klaas.
The neighbor was Henk Blanke. He already started milking pigeons at the age of eight. “How it happened, I don’t really remember. But at some point I get a few pigeons from a friend of my parents. I started flying with that.”
Klaas became involved in Henk’s hobby by chance. The latter had to be in military service in the 1960s and needed someone who wanted to take care of his pigeons. He came to his neighbor boy.
“He asked if I wanted to fit a night on the pigeons. After that he would find someone else who would form a combination with him,” Klaas remembers. “That was another evening, and another evening, and another. And now we are sixty years later.”
In all those years the duo has experienced and won quite a bit. At the age of thirteen, Henk already won his first game at the Duivensportvereniging. Although at the time no one believed that the youngest member ran away with the first prize. “Only when reading the gummiring did they see that my pigeon was the fastest.”
Eight times they won the general championship of their own carrier pigeon club together, but also outside the borders of Hoogeveen, the duo won prizes. “We have been northern champions twice. And we won 8,000 guilders once in one weekend,” says Klaas proudly.
But the prices are actually a side issue. Their joint hobby and friendship is the most important. Over the years, they have been well attuned to each other. Henk takes care of the pigeons, Klaas arranges everything around it. “I always move paperwork,” says Henk with a smile.
That does not mean that Klaas has had nothing to do with the pigeons. “When I was still working in my shoe store, I was sometimes too busy to be with the pigeons. When we participated with a game, Klaas waited behind the store on the pigeons. As soon as he put his head around the corner, I told customers that the phone rang and I quickly went out. Because then a pigeon came back,” says Henk.
In the meantime, time has flown by and the pigeon duo has no intention of throwing the tilt in the lock. Klaas and Henk are still participating in competitions and also on the day they celebrate their 60-year-old together, the pigeons just fly out.
“It is still exciting every time they almost come in,” says Henk. “Then we sit here together on our white chairs to the air. When they almost arrive, it still starts to itch. Fortunately they always come back.”
The Hoogeveen Zeign pigeon association does not want to let Jubilee Day pass quietly and put Henk and Klaas in the spotlight today. And if it’s up to the duo, they will celebrate a party in ten years. “Yes, as long we can just go through with it.”