For those who lived in Emmen in the 1970s and 1980s, the name Henk Stormer was not unknown. He was the man of radios and the first Emmer cinema, the man who also founded the very first radio museum in the Netherlands: the Radiotron. His son Jan (79) and daughter Jeannette (67) look back on the man who brought images and sound to Emmen.
Radios were his passion and his life. When young Henk looked over the shoulders of the radio technician at his home at the age of 11, he knew immediately. I want that too. Stormer was born in 1919 in Bolsward, Friesland, but his family moved to Beilen, Heerlen and ultimately Emmen in the following years.
At the age of 15, he helps his father in his barbershop in Derksstraat, but Henk doesn’t really like that at all. With a heart for technology, he trained as a radio technician and started his own radio and TV repair company in 1940.
“But in the end he couldn’t sing it around, so he took a job at the cinema,” says son Jan, who, together with daughter Jeannette, leafs through a few thick scrapbooks full of photos and clippings.
In the 1930s, Koos Groothuis built a Concert Hall on the Markt, where film screenings were also shown. Before that, this happened in an old fairground tent. Because of his technical background, Henk can work as a film projectionist.
“If I was allowed and it was a good and decent film, then I was allowed to watch on the stairs near the projector room,” Jan remembers. “I could never go to the cinema with a boyfriend,” Jeannette laughs. “Because Dad kept an eye on it all.”
Films where the actors did not remain in their clothes were taboo. “We couldn’t get in at Turkish Delight or Rooie Sien.” And father’s will was law, Jan, Jeannette and their brother Jo (74) knew that all too well. “He stood on his points, so to speak,” Jeannette said.
Technology was his passion and his life and that love was expressed in just about everything that Henk undertook. “He took a camera with him and filmed, just for the news. He was at a peat fire in Emmer-Compascuum. Jan takes the clippings, which show that father Henk regularly made the news.
An old newspaper report from 1956 tells how he provided a radio connection between immigrants from Australia and their home country. At a fair (the VVV Weeks) in Emmen he walks around with a microphone, talking to visitors. Jan: “Where are you from and why did you come to the Tourist Information Weeks? You heard him give those talks through the loudspeakers placed here and there on the fairground.”
The City Theater opened on Notaris Oostingstraat in 1953. Groothuis stops showing the films, but Henk can easily switch to the newcomer. It is the first real cinema in the Butterfly City. According to Jan and Jeannette, there was also a disadvantage to this.
“He was working at a wedding, a party, Christmas or on the weekend,” says Jeannette. “My mother sometimes said: I sometimes feel like a widow, but of a man who is still alive.”
But you get used to it, eventually. Jan: “You just grow up with it.” The City Theater also closed in 1978 due to the opening of the Euro Cinemas in the De Weiert shopping center.