6 - Jansma Family
Jonathan: See what I’m wearing? I do. That’s a good thing. That’s a good safety feature.
So mom, it’s June 4, I think, 2025.
And we’re talking on what is today, Wednesday afternoon. And appreciate your taking time out. Last time we talked about elementary or middle school and leading up to high school. And I’ve got some more kind of questions related to that. We’re going to then talk about college years.
Laura: Okay.
Jonathan: Yeah. Yep. So to start out with, would you care to talk about as an adolescent, how you related to your parents? Is there any thoughts that come to mind that we haven’t already talked about?
Laura: I think that if I summarized it, my mother was quietly influential, always quiet. Never, I don’t remember her shaking her finger and sermoning me and scolding me. If she was disappointed in me, she would say so quietly. My father was surely my strongest influence because he and I were a team. when it came to his pastorate. And so we did so many meetings, so many funerals, weddings, and church services together. And that meant we drove places together. That also meant that we ate in restaurants together. And I never had that kind of experience with my mother. But I did with my dad because of how his job and my job coincided.
Jonathan: Yeah, that’s great. That’s that’s helpful. It’s interesting to hear you talk about your mom as being a quiet influence. So she she communicated to you very suddenly. And but would you have heart to heart conversations with them like one on one? You recall like sitting on a sofa and sharing details of your day, that sort of thing?
Laura: No, no. It’s then if that happened, it happened at the dinner table and everybody pitched in.
Jonathan: Yeah. Were there, so I’m just trying to think of like spaces around the house that you would congregate, but it sounds like it didn’t happen. Like you would catch people one-on-one even.
Laura: Okay. The place we congregated as soon as the meal was over was the TV room, the little den in the back of the house. And there were certain shows that we always watched. and we watched them together and when they were on, we laughed and maybe commented, but not much. We just listened. So that was part of the day before I would hit homework.
Jonathan: Okay. Okay. Okay.
Jonathan: Well, I want to come back to something related to that. But much like we talked about your adolescent relationship with your parents, any things come to mind about your relationship with your siblings that we haven’t talked about already? And maybe start at the top with Connie and then chronologically maybe.
Laura: OK. Well, we all had our own circle of friends. And so the social life was that.
And we didn’t cross lines when that happened. So household chores were usually divided between the girls do this, the boys do that. So that was about the only time that I think of as me and my sister being a team to do chores.
I don’t think that we slept together in the same bed. We had the same room. And there was a time when I left earlier in the morning to go to school than she did. And so during that spot in time, she would borrow my clothes. And so if I remember ever that there was a fight between Connie and me, it was that issue that she was not supposed to help herself to my things when I wasn’t there.
Jonathan: Would you confide in your sister? Were you there for each other? Is that reasonable to think of?
Laura: I don’t think that we confide in each other that much. At least I don’t remember. But in truth, there wasn’t much to be confiding about.
My schedule was far different than hers because when I wasn’t studying or in school, music was my life.
Whereas she, my brothers were into sports a lot. My sister did writing. I know that she was part of a school newspaper. And her strengths in writing showed in her particular high school and college days.
And they were usually subjects that we did not have in common.
Jonathan: Okay. There’s a year and a half or two years between you and Connie. Help me remember.
Laura: There’s three years.
Jonathan: Okay.
Laura: I’m 87 right now and she’s 84. Okay.
Jonathan: And that’s a lot of years when you’re in teens or high school.
Laura: Well, it meant that when I was a senior, she was just starting.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Laura: And then when she was a senior, Ted was a sophomore, and Paul was a freshman.
But the boys were never in college at the same time I was, or in high school at the same time I was.
Jonathan: OK.
Were you delegated responsibilities to babysit your brothers then, or your sister? Was there an expectation?
Laura: Not really.
Jonathan: Who kind of helped you. Do you remember things about your brothers then like interactions? What, what was unique in your interactions with your brothers?
Laura: Um, it’s hard for me to remember. Uh, their sports world meant that after school, they didn’t come home when I came home and My interaction with them really got strong when I was living on Dunham Street and they were students at Calvin. They came to my house often. They brought their laundry, their mending. They loved to have a treat or sit for supper. And so they used me a lot in their college years because I lived close by and they were far away from mom and dad. And so that is when I had the warmest, funniest, happiest back and forth with Ted and Paul.
Jonathan: Yeah. Okay. That’s interesting. And your parents at that point were out East again? Yes.
Interesting.
Any other things that come to mind? Funny stories or reflections about your siblings?
Laura: Not really, I can’t think of any.
Jonathan: Okay, okay. Well, if they come to you, I’m gonna, I had people just come home, I’m gonna catch my door and wave real quick, okay? Sure. I’ll be right back.
Back with you.
Laura: So then my first year of college and my last year of high school, I was dating Bob Heveley. Bob went to Hope and I went to Calvin, but I was so in love. I really wasn’t paying attention to my studies very much. And so I failed French. That was one year of college. That’s all that I had. When I failed, that was sort of the end of my going to college. I got a job with a telephone.
Jonathan: Mom, we talked about this last week.
I’m going to pause you for just a second, OK? Because you talked about the Walker, teaching at Walker.
Laura: Yes.
Jonathan: Well, let me.
Laura: But you’ve got to understand that my year at Calvin Uh, I didn’t drive yet and I, so I took the bus and my life was heavily musical and because Bob was far away we did a whole lot of phone messages and wrote letters to each other. And when I failed French. I concentrated on Bob. I gave up the idea of finishing college. I was ashamed and I dove into a job so that my days were full and I didn’t need to talk to anybody about not being in college.
And at the same time, Bob was not passing things at Hope. He was president of the freshman class. And yet, he was not studying. So he only got one year of college, too. And then he started a job. And we started dating heavily. And right then, my parents accepted a call to New Jersey. So I did not want to go to New Jersey with them. I had a daytime job. And I moved in with Grandpa Gezon and Aunt Agnes. About half the year, let’s see, in my freshman college year, my grandpa came to my house one day and he put a couple hundred dollars on the middle of the table and told my mother that that was my share of the family car and that I needed to learn to drive. Now, I didn’t dare to pursue that, but he did it for me. And at that point, my parents allowed me to take driving lessons and I ended up getting a little car. Now, this is when my dad was still at sixth or eighth reformed in Galewood.
And I’ll never forget one day I left the car in the driveway but I didn’t put it in park and Burton Street was very busy and the car rolled down the driveway and across the street and up the other curb and didn’t hit any cars and the traffic there was pretty heavy. So my expertise as a driver was in question right from the start. But once my parents went to New Jersey, I had to have the car to get to my job.
I did not head back to college. I was planning a wedding and Bob wasn’t going to school and I wasn’t going to school and Agnes was helping me learn how to cook and my grandpa I have such crazy memories of my grandpa. At that point, he did not own a store anymore. He didn’t own a business anymore, but he owned a number of apartments he rented. And he was a crazy driver. When he drove, he looked underneath the steering wheel at the road. That’s how he drove. And he had one accident after another, never serious, but always running into things. He would run into poles and garages and never disabling his car. But I remember that Agnes was always fretting the fact that grandpa was on the road. She just didn’t want him to be driving because he was so dreadful a driver. However, he had to go from apartment to apartment to collect his rent, to arrange repairs, to show the apartments because there were frequent changeovers where tenants moved out and he had to show them again. And so that became the biggest part of his life. He would come home every day at noon, and Agnes always had a meal at noon, a hot meal.
Then Aunt Agnes got very sick with pneumonia and was hospitalized. So I’m living at the house with Grandpa Gezon, and it’s up to me to cook the meals. He never cooked anything. But he would report to Agnes my cooking. The potatoes were still hard. Or I remember that I did not feel like a competent cook in grandpa’s eyes. But during this whole period, I was looking for a wedding dress, trying to figure out what plans were for the wedding. Dad had no men that were close friends. And so he could not come up with the name of a best man. So the one that was my friend from high school, not particularly strong friend, but a good friend, Norm Meyer became our best man.
Bob hardly knew him. When I look at the pictures of Norm at the wedding, it just seemed like he’s a stranger there.
But at any rate, I planned the wedding. And when dad and mom came to Michigan, then dad performed the wedding. I made the dress myself.
And I had availability of sewing materials and sewing machine and everything still at Ann Agnes’ house. So the whole preparation for my wedding was when I was doing a job at telephone company I was not going to college and I was not thinking about going to college. I just was concentrating on getting married.
Okay. So if I graduated in 55 and in by 57, I was out of college by 58, I was married.
Okay. Okay. Bob and I had bought a trailer that was parked in a, I want to pause you there.
Jonathan: Hold on. Hold on. Cause we recovered a lot of ground. I want to, I want to backtrack a little bit. So you how did you meet Bob?
Laura: Um, Christian endeavor was the youth program at the reform church and I was the, editor for the state of Michigan and Bob was the president for the state of Michigan. So the Christian Endeavor meetings was where we first met. He went to Home Acre Reformed and I went to A3 formed.
Jonathan: So how old were you when you, when you met?
Laura: That was probably junior year of high school.
Jonathan: Okay. So did you, you were attending Christian and never meetings, which were monthly or.
Laura: Well, that was every week at church, but he would be going to his meetings and I to my meetings. So the only time we met together were the administrative kinds of plans where we would put together the yearly convention.
I don’t remember what other business we did, but we would meet not often. And that’s where I first met him.
Jonathan: So you’re both operating in a kind of official capacity in this group. What was your first memory of Bob and what caught your attention?
Laura: I just admired that he was the president.
And our first dates were at Homeacres Church. a Sunday evening meeting, something like that. He was driving and his mother reached out to me right away. And his sister Judy was sort of a tattletale. I felt like she was a snoop.
Jonathan: But wait a second, I had to reach out to you because, look, tell me about that.
Laura: Well, I started being invited there for meals on Sunday before the Sunday night service. I would have to play in the morning, but sometimes I didn’t have to play at night. If I didn’t play the organ, then I would go to Homeacres Church sometimes, not real often, but occasionally with Bob’s mother and dad. And it was those meals at Bob’s house where Bob’s mother really reached out to me. But Bob was never invited for meals at my house. My parents just never did that.
Jonathan: You’ve hinted that earlier, like your pals in middle school, you never do sleepover. So that was kind of in character for your parents.
Laura: That’s right.
Jonathan: So Ida made you feel very welcomed and do you have a nice memory of that?
Laura: Oh, yes, I do.
Ida was so kind to me over the years.
Even when there was a point where Bob and I had a dispute and broke up. And this was when we were living on Osceola and I was trying to sell the Thornton Apple House. And it was a Thanksgiving day. And Bob’s dad had a friend. We didn’t know what was going on there. But then Judy, Laura and Ida came to the Osceola house for Thanksgiving dinner. So that meant for me that I had a relationship with her even when I was conflicting with her son.
Jonathan: Well, that was well after you had divorced, right? I mean, that was many years after like eight years, probably.
Laura: You’re right.
Jonathan: Okay.
Laura: But I, I had a close relationship with Ada with either to the point where She was staying at Judy’s house and I went to see her at Judy’s house and I sat next to her on her bed. She was in bed holding her hand and I was reciting Psalm 23 to her and she died while I was holding her hand. She just stopped breathing.
And I think Judy was very angry that that happened. to me instead of to one of them. I didn’t have anything to do with that. It just happened, you know?
Jonathan: Sure.
Laura: But Ida and I were very close to her very last moment.
Jonathan: Yeah.
So, okay. Christian Endeavor, you were, that was your junior year, maybe your senior year too?
Laura: Oh, yes.
Jonathan: Yeah. And into college or did that stop? Was that high school?
Laura: It’s just a high school group.
Jonathan: OK. Tell me other memories like I’m just curious that the first interactions with with Bob, what what do you know? What’s your memory?
Laura: He spoke very badly about Godwin High School, where he graduated. He really didn’t have good connection with the students or the teachers. But what was amazing is when he got to Hope, he was elected president of the freshman class.
And the fact that he was president of Christian Endeavor, he had leadership qualities.
He was attractive to look at and a smooth talker.
And I was spellbound.
Jonathan: Okay. Well, was, was, I’m gonna backtrack. This is in junior year of high school. Was Bob the first person you dated?
Laura: Oh, no.
Jonathan: Okay. You care about other people?
Laura: Oh, yeah. Rich Van Valkenburg was one that I really liked. And when I was teaching at Walker, Rich died. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, but when I saw his death in those days, you got the newspaper every day and the obit every day. And so I went to his funeral because He was one I had seriously dated. He had a beautiful singing voice and he came more than once to A3 Form when I was playing a church service. There were a couple of other guys who now go to Le Grave and I can’t even think of their names right now that I dated.
But Bob took over pretty much from my junior year.
Jonathan: Yeah. So you, I’m curious, Richard Valkenburg, I’ve not heard that name before. What you, a date would be going out for a soda or what?
Laura: Well, he was, he was a singer. So anytime there was a chorus program afterwards, he would take me out for a snack and bring me home. He was a driver.
But I don’t remember his taking me to sporting events. I think that almost everything that we did had a music connection. He was a very good singer.
Jonathan: Sounds like an early death for him. Was he in an accident?
Laura: I don’t remember how he died. It was a shock to me too.
Jonathan: All right. So your first kiss, that’s one of the questions that’s in this book that I was instructed I have to ask you.
Laura: I don’t remember. I honestly don’t remember.
Jonathan: Okay. Well, just teasing you. None of these questions do you have to answer, right? But it’s fun to hear about your early dating life, I will say. So And I didn’t know any of these details about, I mean, how you, how you met dad. And so that’s, that’s entertaining too. What so Christian Endeavor dinners at Ida and Corny’s house. You got to meet Judy and Laura Were you felt welcomed by Ida? Did you feel welcomed by others in Bob’s family?
Laura: Laura, yes.
Yes, I was close to her, right to her dying day.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Laura: And she had a hard life.
For one thing, Judy was very cruel to her. I observed Judy Judy’s unkindness, even at dinners. So I never ever got close to Judy and I never respected her. And Laura Lee, she was a giver. She was generous, kind, thoughtful, hardworking, lonely. She never dated anybody in high school. And Judy, needled her about that kind of thing, always. I remember her saying things like, so who’s taking you to the football game this weekend? And she’d say this at the dinner table when everybody’s sitting there, knowing Laura had no.
Jonathan: That’s painful.
Laura: Invitation. Yeah. But I heard her again and again. And so over the years, she was not close to Bob. or me.
Jonathan: That’s unfortunate. All right. So you, when did you first start with serious with Bob? When did you feel like this is, this is going to be important?
Laura: Right. My, my senior year of high school, when I was, when, when my folks moved to New Jersey and I moved in with the an Agnes.
Jonathan: Okay.
Laura: And I remember my class size was very large, 200 and some or 300 and some. And I remember the day of my graduation, my parents were in New Jersey and Agnes had been sick and grandpa announced he wasn’t going to sit through the naming that many students. So he didn’t want to go to the graduation. So Bob was the only one that went to my high school graduation.
Jonathan: And he himself graduated the same year, right? You’re both the same age? Yeah. OK. OK. Let me see this quickly here.
So was Bob your first steady relationship?
Laura: Really, yes.
Jonathan: Yeah. OK. And you were 16 or 17 when that happened? Yep. Okay. Do you remember giving gifts to each other or what sorts of things did you share together?
Laura: I don’t remember gifts at all.
I remember going with them to pick out the engagement ring.
It was about $125 and it was one little stone and then a circle of little tiny slits of stones. So it was very simple. I ended up selling it years later because I didn’t want to remember it. But he took me to pick it out.
Now this would have been when he was at Hope.
Jonathan: Okay. Before that happened, though, you had a very serious conversation, I guess.
Laura: Oh, of course.
Jonathan: Yeah, what do you remember of that?
Laura: I remember that when he started Hope College, he was planning to be a minister. And so he talked with my father at length. And whenever I would play at a wedding or funeral somewhere else, churches would always, in their foyer, have devotions or copies of sermons or things that you could help yourself to. And I would pick them up. I ended up giving him a whole bag full. thinking he was saving them as ideas for sermons someday. The truth is, my dad never dropped Bob. To all of his dishonesty and his affairs and everything, my dad kept in touch with him, and I was given letters that my dad wrote to him, not monthly, but maybe bimonthly, where, first of all, it was encouraging him not to give up the idea of preaching or praising him for proving himself as a leader in a Christian organization. And I guess, and Bob had no good relation with his own dad. And so he really hung on to my dad. And they never, ever split. That lasted till my dad died.
Jonathan: That is a lovely statement about your dad, Mom. That’s really, I got that sense before today. But what a powerful thing. But let’s go back a little bit. Your dad maybe modeled something that Bob aspired to, right? Your dad is a very well-respected pastor, and Bob had hopes of doing that too.
Laura: Yes, you’re right.
Jonathan: Yeah. And do you have a sense for, because I’ve never had this conversation with him, did Bob aspire to that for a long time, or what’s your stance?
Laura: In his freshman year of college, the lies started. He acted like he was going to class.
He functioned as the president of the class, so there were a number of occasions when I remember going to Holland. I don’t remember what the occasions were, but the truth was he didn’t even pass his first semester of courses. And that was when I found this out years, like two or three years later, and I found it out through Uncle Dick. That was where the pattern of telling lies began.
Jonathan: So I want to back up. Do you think that Bob, as president of Christian Endeavor in high school, was aspiring to become a minister even back then or?
Laura: Oh, absolutely.
Jonathan: Oh, yeah. And before then, like middle school, like, is this something that he had set his eyes on?
Laura: I think it started when he was dating me and he started communicating with my dad. OK. And they were they were good friends.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Laura: And.
I had no idea of what was happening when he went to hope.
Jonathan: Sure, sure. But your understanding of it was like when he was in high school, even that his, his.
Laura: That’s when he started to aspire to be a minister. OK. And you’ve got to understand that because of his role as president, whenever we would have rallies in churches and on Sunday afternoons and He would be the spokesman, the first one to make announcements and maybe lead in prayer. His role was similar to being a pastor of a large group because he spoke in front of everybody.
Jonathan: But I would love to have heard him. Was he was he poised and organized and leading those sorts of things?
Laura: I think he was. I think he was.
Jonathan: He felt comfortable. He probably and knowing him, he probably enjoyed kind of being up in front of people a little bit.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan: OK. So, and maybe, I don’t know, we’ve talked about your time in high school, but you could probably fill in the gaps a little bit about Bob’s time in high school. Is that something, and we don’t even need to do that today, but would that be a fruitful topic for us to talk about? About my time in high school? No, about Bob.
Laura: Because we didn’t go to the same high school I had no idea I mean he graduated so he must have passed things yeah, you know, I I think that the He he was He was kidding himself when he went to college and he didn’t study He didn’t really accept what the consequences were, but he was still living this
history of being a religious leader in a youth group. And so that dominated his feelings about himself and really his dishonesty to all of us was first and foremost his dishonesty to himself. He just did not study and slid along.
Jonathan: Yeah. Yep. There’s a psychological challenge going on there. All right.
Laura: You got to also remember this. Think about the home that he came from. His mother was a slave. His father made her type. He did a lot of church bulletins and a lot of youth newsletters, and she worked so hard that it was wonderful and rare when she’d invite me for a Sunday dinner because my mother never did that. But his mom tried very hard to incorporate, to encourage our romance. And she always was so good to me. So he’s living in a house where his father dominates and is very insensitive and a sister who’s very unkind and openly, her unkindness was spoken. It was not hidden at all. And another sister who was cowering, just taking it on the chin all the time. Not ever sticking up for herself. So in that kind of a home environment, it wasn’t a happy family at all. And that’s why for his mother to be so kind and so hard working and actually have me for dinner was far beyond what you’d expect for the way she had to live on a day-to-day basis. Sure. And she had very little understanding or control of the, the relationship of her two daughters, which was very sad. I became very close to Laura over the years and was with her when she died too.
Jonathan: Nobody’s saying understanding or control of her daughters. What, what do you mean by that? And why do you think that is?
Laura: I don’t, I don’t think she had the power to stop Judy’s belittling of Laura. I mean, I heard it at the dinner table where there was no correction of any kind. You know, I don’t think that she knew how. And the other thing is, I don’t think she realized how all encompassing, how all encompassing it was and how it affected Laura’s personality. Laura didn’t date anybody. anybody. And Judy poked fun of that all the time. And so when Laura finally got married late in her life, that was a miracle that I don’t know how it happened because she didn’t get any help at home.
Jonathan: Okay. Hey, now I’m going to, I wonder if this is 50 minutes in, would now be a good time to pause?
Laura: Yeah, probably.
Jonathan: Is that okay?
Laura: Yeah. But now, but now we’ll be starting my living at in Agnes, my marriage and my first job teaching at Walker with only one year of college. And I’ll do that. I’ll do that next time.
Okay.
Jonathan: Hold on just a second. I’m going to pause the recording.