William ‘Bill’ Strijbis turns 100 today and will be celebrating with a lunchtime treat at Rosebank Lifecare and catching up with family and friends.
Bill’s daughter Alison Hydes and her family are bringing a KFC lunch treat for the centenarian.
Bill said having friends and family pop in during the day will be the highlight.
‘‘It’s amazing what difference it can make when people know one another,” he said.
“I’ve seen enough and I’ve been everywhere, I don’t want much more.”
He thinks the answer to a long life is walking every day and eating simple healthy meals with plenty of homegrown vegetables.
Bill was a familiar figure on the roads around Rosebank when he moved in five years ago, taking daily walks around the block with his walking frame.
He also used his exer-cycle twice a day until breathing issues late last year put a stop to his exercise.
He has always been active.
Bill grew up in Holland and after moving to New Zealand in 1952 did short stints in Parnassus and Nelson working on a farms before moving to Canterbury. There he worked on the same Weedons farm for 15 years.
Bill said moving to Canterbury was where he felt everything started to fall into place for him.
Meeting his wife Margaret at a midweek dance confirmed it.
‘‘I said to my boss ‘I think I have met my future wife’.”
To cement Bill’s feelings about Margaret even further, he soon found out that her mother had gone to school with the brother of his boss’s wife.
At the time his ‘future wife’ was living on the West Coast in Hari Hari, and after several expensive trips to the coast and back, the couple got married in December 1961 in Hokitika.
The couple went on to have three children; Alison, David and Jenny.
Bill now has six grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
He has been widowed since his mid-80’s, but thanks to taking early retirement the couple got to enjoy the wonderful garden Bill loved so much surrounding their Hornby home.
Bill, a twin, was born in 1926 to Klaas and Aagie Strijbis. His late twin sister, Geertje, died six years ago.
Bill was number eight of nine children.
Growing up, he found traditional education was not for him, and he left school at age 13 to work on his parents market garden farm.
“I did some correspondence work and got two or three diplomas, one in market gardening,” he said.
Caught up in his country’s compulsory conscription policy, Bill was sent to Sumatra in his early 20s during Indonesian fight for independence from the Japanese.
Bill said although they were there to stop the destruction of factories, he still found time to study and gained a diploma in bookwork and administration.
‘‘Our platoon saved a palm oil factory and the army gave us a big bonus, but we couldn’t touch it until we got home.”
In 1950, Bill finally got to go home to Holland after a three year absence.
‘‘The boat followed the canal right into Amsterdam. You can just imagine the excitement we felt coming up that canal. Even if it was the middle of winter and really cold.”
‘‘I got home on the Saturday night and on the Monday morning my mother said ‘you better start working or we can’t feed you’.”
Bill felt Holland had changed during his time away, so when the army came knocking again Bill accepted his brother’s invitation to join him in New Zealand.
