“This is a very special day in my life,” says Wim Postma (1946). Yesterday afternoon he was appointed Knight in the Order of Oranje-Nassau by deputy mayor Cor Staal.
That happened during the Heritage & Ambacht Expo in Frederiksoord that he was also organized by him. “I am very happy with it and very proud of it,” says Postma about the Royal Award.
He was present at the Expo as a filmmaker where nearly a thousand students from all over Drenthe were introduced to different crafts. Postma: “The students were very spontaneous and enthusiastic. It was very nice.”
When he had played the last recordings and walked back to the main building, he noticed a number of things. That the deputy mayor was there, for example, complete with office chain. “But then you don’t know why,” he says. When his wife said to change his sweater for a jacket, Postma started to suspect something.
Postma was surrounded by friends, acquaintances and family when he received the award. “That was the best,” he says happily. “That everyone was there.” Similarly, five grandchildren, of whom the youngest is 18 and the oldest is 23. “As a grandfather you don’t tell everything you do.” But because of the speeches they were all told that.
Postma was the majority of his working life in the service of the province of Drenthe, where monument care ran through his career as a common thread. For example, he took the initiative for the Drents Monument working group, which later became the Drents Monument Foundation. As a pensionado he is still involved.
From that foundation, Postma also wrote the scenario of the film that was made in the context of the 150th anniversary of Monumentenzorg in Drenthe. In addition to his commitment to Monumentenzorg and the transfer thereof, Postma also did and do many other things in the service of society.
Postma is therefore not going to stop: “As long as it is possible, I want to keep doing it.”
“It is important that the youth get that it is good to work for a broader goal,” says Postma. He hopes to inspire young people to do that. One of his granddaughters who is now in student life is already picking that up by taking a role in an association.
He likes that Postma now also receives recognition for his work in the form of a ribbon. What remained the most of him of the speech of deputy mayor Staal is the word ‘connection’. Something he is committed to. “That you have to listen to each other and talk to each other to find a way to a solution.”
Louwe Dijkema and Jan Hulsegge of Stichting Drents Monument are the initiators of the award for Postma. He is very grateful to them. “Also because I know how much difficulty such an application can be, because I have sometimes arranged that for others.”