(Oct. 6, 2016) Roelof Oostveen knows a thing or two about bicycles.
For anyone who has been to a board meeting in Ocean Pines during the last decade, it’s hard to miss the man also known locally as “Dutch. He was a staunch critic of former General Manager Bob Thompson and has never been afraid to speak his mind, albeit with a thick, European accent.
But behind the outsize presence he shows off during public sessions is a man who grew up under Nazi occupation, raised three children, moved his entire family to a new continent, raced in the Senior Olympics and carved out his own version of the American dream.
Oostveen was born in 1931 in the Netherlands, one of seven children. His father was a coal miner.
“We had a good home. We had a clean house. We had something to eat – not every day steak, but we thought we were living high on the hog. And then the war came,” he said.
He was 10 years old when World War II arrived in his small village of Eygelshoven, near Limburg.
“The war was tough,” Oostveen said. “You had no rights. The Germans controlled it. When the Germans were winning, they let you know.”
His father was forced to work in the coal mines for 10 hours each day. Afterwards, he worked in the fields in order to feed his family. Food stamps were available, but “there was nothing in the store,” Oostveen said.
Among the most harrowing sights he saw during the war, Oostveen remembers watching a train running along the border of the Netherlands and Germany, the cattle cars stuffed with people.
“The cattle cars, they had on the top an opening for when cattle were in it, and there was a guy hanging out halfway and screaming for water. You have to remember, they spent five or six days in that cattle wagon before they were in Auschwitz or wherever,” Oostveen said.
German soldiers killed several people in town before American troops liberated the southern part of the country in 1944. Nazi occupation would continue into the early part of 1945.
“I can remember when the Battle of the Bulge started. We kept the [American] soldiers in our house,” Oostveen said. “They treated us very, very, very well. They left us some clothes behind – we had nothing. I was a young guy, 14 years old. I had pants on, size 36, with a knot in the back.”
In 1946, while Europe was still struggling to recover from the war, Oostveen became interested in cycling. In order to ride, he built his own bicycle using parts from three other bikes – a skill he still uses to this day.
Once, he rode from his home all the way to Frankfurt, Germany, which he estimated was about a 250-kilometer trip.
“That took me quite a long time,” Oostveen said.
Two weeks later, and weighing several pounds less, he lost a major race in his hometown “by a wheel length.”
“That was the best time I ever rode,” he said. “I rode little races and it was not much money, but you have to remember we were working for 35 cents an hour and if you won a race you got $25.
“I enjoyed it my whole life,” Oostveen continued. “It’s a big sport in Europe. We had in every town, bike races. You went 20 miles, there was three or four bike races.”
While he was racing with that old, makeshift bike, Oostveen was also studying to become a mechanic. It was difficult to find work in that field, he said, adding, “You make $50, it cost you $100 to live.”
Oostveen traveled briefly to work in Canada, then returned home and married Maria Fernanda.
In 1958, he and his wife and young son immigrated to America. The family of a soldier who stayed in his home during the war sponsored the Oostveens, which was necessary at the time under Dutch laws.
Still, the family struggled after arriving in Washington, D.C. He found work in a steel factory in Bladensburg, Maryland, which required four additional years of training in an apprenticeship school.
After working his way through the ranks, Oostveen became the highest-paid employee in the factory. He spent fours years teaching in a union school and then landed a job as a mechanic at a naval research facility in the District.
For the next 20 years, he worked on submarine warfare tactics and mechanics, often traveling to the North Pole, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, England and Scotland during research trips that could range from one month, to three or four months at a time. Conditions were not always optimal, but it meant he could come home and find his family well fed, with a sturdy roof over their heads.
“When I came to America, I had a wife and a kid and $50 in my pocket – and I made it,” Oostveen said. “I’m not rich, but I live comfortably.”
Between about 1960 and 1980, Oostveen said he did not ride a bike. Then, in the late 1980s, he finally bought his first proper racing cycle.
“I did a little bit semi-professional. I wasn’t a Lance Armstrong, but I could get along,” he said. “Once I got married, I realized I could not live on a bicycle and I had to work.”
He moved to Ocean Pines in 1993 a few years after retiring. When word got out that he was good at fixing bicycles, Oostveen was inundated with requests.
“It got a little out of proportion – I had sometimes 100 bikes,” he said.
“The bikes now are different,” he continued. “My first bike was made from three bikes – you cannot do that now. If you buy one thing from one company, you have to buy everything. It’s just like a car – you cannot mix stuff with a Chevrolet.”
After his wife died last December, Oostveen has spent much of his time in the garage behind his home, fixing bicycles. It keeps him busy, he said.
“I had a very good wife and we had a very good life,” he said. “She was a very pretty lady.
“Now, people say how come you’re so nice and dressed up? I never go anywhere like a slob. My wife was like that,” he said. “If we went on a Sunday to church and I had a spot on my shirt, I’d better put a new shirt on or she would not go – this was my wife. And my daughter is exactly the same.”
He spends part of each weekend combing through yard sales, looking for things he might be able to restore or repair, then donates many of the fixed bikes to the local Optimist Club.
“I had some bikes and one guy said, ‘I know who wants the bikes.’ The Optimist Club is just straight for the kids and they do a lot of work for Decatur High School. They invited me to a meeting and I liked it and enjoyed it,” he said. “We’ve got a meeting every month and there’s never an argument.”
Oostveen estimated he donates between 30 and 50 bikes each year. Occasionally, when he finds an antique he thinks he can restore, he’ll look for an interested buyer and try to make a few dollars back. Some of his handiwork in now featured in a bicycle museum in Pittsburgh.
He still rides three times a week, and belongs to a local informal cycling club in Ocean Pines. He is also a founding member and oldest member of a bicycle club he helped start in Holland in 1950.
“Some years ago, they had a 50-year history and they asked me to come over and they had a story, ‘for five minutes’ glory he traveled 6,000 miles,’” he said. “They wrote a lot about me in the magazines and I still have a lot of contact with them. When I go home, maybe in the springtime, I’m going to see the club.”
Almost like clockwork, he also attends the board of director meetings in Ocean Pines.
“I’m very outspoken with the board,” he said. “Sometimes I’m not 100 percent in the English language, but I like the guys on the board – I just don’t like the policies. Mr. Thompson was a very nice person, but he was not the right man for Ocean Pines. I wrote him a nice letter – a sympathy letter.”
Oostveen describes himself as “an old-fashioned guy” who enjoys the culture that he grew with in a small village near the border between the Netherlands and Germany.
“I like nice, German music and I like a little good drink,” he said. “America was very good to me. I never would have done in Holland what I did in America. I was just a plain mechanic – a machinist. I did very, very well here and I’m very happy.”
To contact Oostveen about a bike repair or sale, call 410-208-1497.
For anyone who has been to a board meeting in Ocean Pines during the last decade, it’s hard to miss the man also known locally as “Dutch. He was a staunch critic of former General Manager Bob Thompson and has never been afraid to speak his mind, albeit with a thick, European accent.
But behind the outsize presence he shows off during public sessions is a man who grew up under Nazi occupation, raised three children, moved his entire family to a new continent, raced in the Senior Olympics and carved out his own version of the American dream.
Oostveen was born in 1931 in the Netherlands, one of seven children. His father was a coal miner.
“We had a good home. We had a clean house. We had something to eat – not every day steak, but we thought we were living high on the hog. And then the war came,” he said.
He was 10 years old when World War II arrived in his small village of Eygelshoven, near Limburg.
“The war was tough,” Oostveen said. “You had no rights. The Germans controlled it. When the Germans were winning, they let you know.”
His father was forced to work in the coal mines for 10 hours each day. Afterwards, he worked in the fields in order to feed his family. Food stamps were available, but “there was nothing in the store,” Oostveen said.
Among the most harrowing sights he saw during the war, Oostveen remembers watching a train running along the border of the Netherlands and Germany, the cattle cars stuffed with people.
“The cattle cars, they had on the top an opening for when cattle were in it, and there was a guy hanging out halfway and screaming for water. You have to remember, they spent five or six days in that cattle wagon before they were in Auschwitz or wherever,” Oostveen said.
German soldiers killed several people in town before American troops liberated the southern part of the country in 1944. Nazi occupation would continue into the early part of 1945.
“I can remember when the Battle of the Bulge started. We kept the [American] soldiers in our house,” Oostveen said. “They treated us very, very, very well. They left us some clothes behind – we had nothing. I was a young guy, 14 years old. I had pants on, size 36, with a knot in the back.”
In 1946, while Europe was still struggling to recover from the war, Oostveen became interested in cycling. In order to ride, he built his own bicycle using parts from three other bikes – a skill he still uses to this day.
Once, he rode from his home all the way to Frankfurt, Germany, which he estimated was about a 250-kilometer trip.
“That took me quite a long time,” Oostveen said.
Two weeks later, and weighing several pounds less, he lost a major race in his hometown “by a wheel length.”
“That was the best time I ever rode,” he said. “I rode little races and it was not much money, but you have to remember we were working for 35 cents an hour and if you won a race you got $25.
“I enjoyed it my whole life,” Oostveen continued. “It’s a big sport in Europe. We had in every town, bike races. You went 20 miles, there was three or four bike races.”
While he was racing with that old, makeshift bike, Oostveen was also studying to become a mechanic. It was difficult to find work in that field, he said, adding, “You make $50, it cost you $100 to live.”
Oostveen traveled briefly to work in Canada, then returned home and married Maria Fernanda.
In 1958, he and his wife and young son immigrated to America. The family of a soldier who stayed in his home during the war sponsored the Oostveens, which was necessary at the time under Dutch laws.
Still, the family struggled after arriving in Washington, D.C. He found work in a steel factory in Bladensburg, Maryland, which required four additional years of training in an apprenticeship school.
After working his way through the ranks, Oostveen became the highest-paid employee in the factory. He spent fours years teaching in a union school and then landed a job as a mechanic at a naval research facility in the District.
For the next 20 years, he worked on submarine warfare tactics and mechanics, often traveling to the North Pole, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, England and Scotland during research trips that could range from one month, to three or four months at a time. Conditions were not always optimal, but it meant he could come home and find his family well fed, with a sturdy roof over their heads.
“When I came to America, I had a wife and a kid and $50 in my pocket – and I made it,” Oostveen said. “I’m not rich, but I live comfortably.”
Between about 1960 and 1980, Oostveen said he did not ride a bike. Then, in the late 1980s, he finally bought his first proper racing cycle.
“I did a little bit semi-professional. I wasn’t a Lance Armstrong, but I could get along,” he said. “Once I got married, I realized I could not live on a bicycle and I had to work.”
He moved to Ocean Pines in 1993 a few years after retiring. When word got out that he was good at fixing bicycles, Oostveen was inundated with requests.
“It got a little out of proportion – I had sometimes 100 bikes,” he said.
“The bikes now are different,” he continued. “My first bike was made from three bikes – you cannot do that now. If you buy one thing from one company, you have to buy everything. It’s just like a car – you cannot mix stuff with a Chevrolet.”
After his wife died last December, Oostveen has spent much of his time in the garage behind his home, fixing bicycles. It keeps him busy, he said.
“I had a very good wife and we had a very good life,” he said. “She was a very pretty lady.
“Now, people say how come you’re so nice and dressed up? I never go anywhere like a slob. My wife was like that,” he said. “If we went on a Sunday to church and I had a spot on my shirt, I’d better put a new shirt on or she would not go – this was my wife. And my daughter is exactly the same.”
He spends part of each weekend combing through yard sales, looking for things he might be able to restore or repair, then donates many of the fixed bikes to the local Optimist Club.
“I had some bikes and one guy said, ‘I know who wants the bikes.’ The Optimist Club is just straight for the kids and they do a lot of work for Decatur High School. They invited me to a meeting and I liked it and enjoyed it,” he said. “We’ve got a meeting every month and there’s never an argument.”
Oostveen estimated he donates between 30 and 50 bikes each year. Occasionally, when he finds an antique he thinks he can restore, he’ll look for an interested buyer and try to make a few dollars back. Some of his handiwork in now featured in a bicycle museum in Pittsburgh.
He still rides three times a week, and belongs to a local informal cycling club in Ocean Pines. He is also a founding member and oldest member of a bicycle club he helped start in Holland in 1950.
“Some years ago, they had a 50-year history and they asked me to come over and they had a story, ‘for five minutes’ glory he traveled 6,000 miles,’” he said. “They wrote a lot about me in the magazines and I still have a lot of contact with them. When I go home, maybe in the springtime, I’m going to see the club.”
Almost like clockwork, he also attends the board of director meetings in Ocean Pines.
“I’m very outspoken with the board,” he said. “Sometimes I’m not 100 percent in the English language, but I like the guys on the board – I just don’t like the policies. Mr. Thompson was a very nice person, but he was not the right man for Ocean Pines. I wrote him a nice letter – a sympathy letter.”
Oostveen describes himself as “an old-fashioned guy” who enjoys the culture that he grew with in a small village near the border between the Netherlands and Germany.
“I like nice, German music and I like a little good drink,” he said. “America was very good to me. I never would have done in Holland what I did in America. I was just a plain mechanic – a machinist. I did very, very well here and I’m very happy.”
To contact Oostveen about a bike repair or sale, call 410-208-1497.