Peace activist Jozef van der Grinten dead at 88
BY RHODA AMON
September 19, 2007
As he planted trees around Long Island during a half-century as a nurseryman, Jozef "Joop" van der Grinten's heart was always in the struggle for peace and social justice.
He wore his button, "Still Against War," until he died Sunday at age 88 in Raleigh, N.C. The cause probably was congestive heart failure, though he suffered from a number of ailments, said his daughter, Ruth van der Grinten-Wiggs of Wendell, N.C., where van der Grinten lived since his health began declining in 2003. "He would ask every day for his 'peace shield,'" she said.
His conviction that "war is not the answer" dated from his experience in his native Holland during the Nazi occupation in World War II, his daughter said. Working with the Dutch Resistance, he hid Jews from Nazi persecution.
His courage was rewarded when he landed in America in 1948 with only his bicycle and $10, she said. The ship's captain introduced him to Herman Baruch, then U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, brother of famed Jewish financier Bernard Baruch and owner of a Huntington nursery. Herman Baruch gave him a job. There he met his late wife, Doris Williams. The couple married in 1951 and settled in Brookhaven in 1955, opening their own nursery and landscaping business.
"He worked for justice for downtrodden people who needed a chance," his daughter said. "He believed in the motto, 'Live simply so that others can simply live.' We had a small house and ratty-looking cars. He believed vehicles were not important except to get you from one place to another."
Friends in the peace movement yesterday recalled van der Grinten's 1984 red Toyota pickup with the bumper sticker, "Think Globally, Act Locally." He was the epitome of that motto, said Susan Kane of Setauket, a longtime anti-war colleague. In the 1960s and '70s, he protested for civil rights, fair housing, a ban against racial discrimination in real estate and an end to the Vietnam War, and was a draft counselor for more than 1,000 young men.
He was active with Pax Christi, the Catholic international peace group.
Van der Grinten served on the board of the then-South Haven school district, was a founding member of the Bellport Day Care Center and volunteered at food pantries. In a East Patchogue community garden, he taught children to be gentle with vegetables, Kane said. "In that way he believed the children would learn to be gentle with each other and grow up non-violent," she said.
Born in Nijmegen, Netherlands, in 1919, the oldest of five children, he turned down an opportunity to study at the university level by refusing to sign a promise to not give sanctuary to Jews. He became a farmer instead. He operated his nursery until he retired in 1999.
Besides his daughter, he is survived by sons Martin of Big Flats, N.Y., and Peter of Guilford, Conn.; sisters Elly deWit, Lily van Oppenraaij and Hanny Feenstra, of the Netherlands; and four granddaughters.
A service to celebrate his life will be held Oct. 6 at 10:30 a.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 510 Narragansett Ave., East Patchogue.
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