This year was a very special Valentine’s Day for 97-year-old Tine Hettema-Van de Blankevoort, former resident of Vledder. She was presented with the Dreespenning by councilor Rob de Geest of the municipality of Deventer because she has been a member of the PvdA for 65 years.
In 1966, she was elected to the municipal council with preferential votes with the slogan ‘women of Vledder, take an action, elect Tine Hettema to the council’. From 1967 to ’70 and from ’74 to’86 she was alderman of the municipality of Vledder (now the municipality of Westerveld) and she also replaced the mayor for a long time when he resigned due to illness.
When the then, also female, Drenthe Queen’s Commissioner Tineke Schilthuis appealed to her to be appointed as mayor elsewhere, she felt, very modestly, that she had to refuse.
Knighthood
When she left the council in 1986, she was awarded a knighthood, which has unfortunately been lost due to a burglary. She also did not want to agree to the question of whether a street could be named after her.
This is characteristic of the socially committed, modest woman that she is. At a time when it was not yet common for women to work outside the home, especially in a Drenthe village, she was sometimes criticized for her domestic qualities and motherhood, but she was also an example of emancipation for many.
In 2011, she and her husband moved to Diepenveen, where she still lives.