JOHN VC

Kevin, here is the provisional bio of Anthony Van Couvering (b. Van
Koevering), our dad — other sibs might want to have a crack at it.
Also two moderately hi res JPGs of Captain Fred and his wife Florence
Atkins, our Pettes great-grandparents, which possibly you might not have
yet.

Anthony Van Couvering

b. Zeeland, MI [date]; d. Villa Park, CA [date]

Anthony was named after his grandfather Antoni Johannes Van Koevering, who came to America as a boy with the founders of the Dutch colony of Zeeland, Michigan in 1848. He was the oldest surviving son of John Van Koevering, a cabinetmaker and carpenter, and Nellie Brink from nearby Groningen. He had three brothers: Egbert, who died of a heart infection at age 18, Nelson John (pharmacist, husband of Elizabeth van Eden), and Egbert Henry (aircraft construction supervisor, husband of Jeanne [name]); and four sisters: Jennie (wife of Rev. Frank Tebow, a Lutheran chaplain and missionary), Cora (wife, late in life, to Anton Johanson, a Chicago streetcar conductor), Louise or “Wees” (wife of John ver Hulst, a carpenter of Holland, Michigan) and Josephine (wife of Jean La Plant, an aircraft and auto mechanic of Downey, California), all of whom but Nelson and Josephine predeceased him

Tony was a boy during the days when every small town family raised much of their own food, with a big backyard garden, chickens, and fruit trees to tend to. You learned to work without complaining, and you watched and practised how to do things, make things and fix things, and this was how he grew to be - uncomplaining, resourceful, quietly amused by life, and never so happy as when he was building something or tending to useful vegetation or animals. As a boy he was seldom punished, because Grampa John could not bear to hurt a child, and like his mother he did not find much to admire in the strict Calvinism of the Dutch Reformed Church, but as a man he never wavered from the moral certainties of his community – honesty, compassion, and decency. This came out in quiet acts of kindness and a generosity of spirit towards both family and strangers that was well hidden behind his few words. On the other hand, he reacted very badly to “loudmouths”, as he called salesmen, politicians, evangelists and backslappers, based on his unbreakable aversion to anyone who attempted to influence his opinions.

He greatly admired his Uncle Martin, the youngest of his five uncles, who had been sent to California as a teen ager for his health and wound up as a consulting engineer who took up geology when the Long Beach Signal Hill oilfield was discovered on his doorstep. In 1926, aged 24, Anthony set off, navigating across country in a Model T to enroll at Oregon State, Martin’s alma mater, and then made his way down the length of California with nothing in his pockets but gas money, eating carrots pulled from the fields, to take a summer job in Martin’s office. Three years later, returning for his annual stint as a seasonal field assistant, he encountered a new secretary, a wisecracking redhead named Mary Mabel Pettes on her first job out of Wilson High School, and that was that. They married in June 1929, the month of his graduation with a degree in accounting, and four months into the Great Depression. It was a matter of pride that he was never out of work and in 1936, with a fast-growing gang of three littlle boys and a fourth on the way he found a distressed 2-acre orange grove in the remote suburb of Downey as a place to bring them up. Within a very short time, his boys were hoeing weeds and collecting chicken eggs and climbing trees for fruit – albeit figs and tangerines instead of apples and cherries – as Zeeland boys were supposed to do. The lucky guys.

Photo of Captain Fred Pettes (large)
Photo of Florence Atkins (large)