Kees (86) and 82-year-old Thea Louws have already had an entire life’s journey. The couple has been married for 60 years on Saturday, April 22, and have lived in Oosterhesselen since the late 1990s. First on the street Langbos, nowadays in a sheltered housing of residential and care center De Etgaarde.
Mayor Renze Bergsma will convey his congratulations on behalf of the municipality of Coevorden on Saturday afternoon. ,,We only celebrate our milestone on August 7, but that has a good reason. Our daughter lives near Bergamo in Italy and is on holiday in Drenthe around that time. We will then see our youngest great-grandchild in real life for the first time, fortunately.”
Cabin in the woods
Long ago Thea was born in Groningen; the cradle of Kees was in Middelburg, where he once played sports at korfball club Swift. “To be honest, I always wanted to go to Drenthe,” says Thea. “In a hut on the moor with a goat, but that turned out just a bit differently,” she laughs.
Thea and Kees met in May 1958 during volunteer work for the church. ,,I lived then Bussum and Kees in Naarden. He went to the private school Rens & Rens in Hilversum. That was a school for electronics and radio engineering. Before my time in Bussum I lived in Amsterdam. Kees also fulfilled his military service.”
The couple married in Bussum and then moved to Rotterdam because of Kees’ work for the municipal energy company. There he did a lot of thinking to have traffic control equipment installed in the large city of Rotterdam. “I also worked at the city hall in Rotterdam, in the field of personnel and organization. And I also followed a study at the then social academy in Breda.”
Thea has worked in primary education in Spijkenisse, among other places. Together with Kees she had three children of her own. In the early 1980s, the couple adopted two more foster children – twins aged 6 at the time – from South Korea. There are eleven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Too busy in Rotterdam
Kees: ,,It eventually became too busy for us in Rotterdam. We actually wanted to look up the tranquility of Drenthe, but first it was Friesland. Saint Anna Parish to be precise. There in Friesland, too, Thea earned her money in education. Kees contributed to the merger of three hospitals into one hospital in Leeuwarden in the field of personnel and organization.
Kees remembers well that many people lost their jobs due to the merger. He took those problems home with him and eventually Kees was rejected for work. His working life ended at the age of 51. ,,I then made myself useful by renovating our small farm in Friesland from the inside. The contrast with Rotterdam was great, but this was what we wanted.”
Three editions of the Elfstedentocht are still unforgettable for the Louws. Not long after the most recent edition – which was in early 1997 – physical problems caused Thea to be temporarily confined to a wheelchair. The accommodation and the property in Sint Annaparochie were therefore unsuitable to stay, so that their next place of residence eventually became Oosterhesselen.
In the neighboring village of Gees, Thea today does voluntary work for the benefit of demented elderly people. Her former work in primary education still comes in handy. Sportcentrum Oosterhesselen is faithfully visited twice a week by the diamond couple. “We have to keep moving, don’t we?”