A little outside Ruinen we find the hamlet of Hees. ‘Three farms originally stood there: Achterhees, Middelhees, Voorhees. Farmers with peat names: Koert, Hilbert, Albert, Wessel. Peat girls like Aaltje, Marritje, Jannetje, Hendrikje. And there was Steven, Koert’s son. He went to America. He came from the Voorhees farm, and he was the father of fifteen Voorhees kids’, writes Willem Meines in his newsletter.
In the Radio Drenthe program Drenthe Toen he continues: “The main character in Friday the 13th, a series of movies, a new episode will be released soon. His name is Jason Voorhees. And that name was not chosen by chance. The Voorhees family came to America from Drenthe, from Ruinen, 400 years ago. And those guys just did a really good job. They have permeated all walks of life. Steven had fifteen children, and there are at least eight thousand families in America right now called Voorhees—pronounce it “Voorhies,” and there are a few thousand more, at least three thousand, called Vorhis, or Vanvoorhees, Vorhiss etcetera. It’s such a clear name, so common and so common in America that the makers of that movie came up with, you know what, we call that man who rants with his machete ‘Jason Voorhees’.”