Five Brothers and a War

Dalton HBS

For Kees, school was an inexhaustible source of fun that made wartime life worthwhile. But when it came time for report cards to be distributed, grades tended to reflect more of the fun part of school rather than the academics. At that point in time, the Dutch had two tracks for completing high school—the “A Track” concentrating on business and commerce, and the “B Track” concentrating on science and technical. One day, toward the end of the 1944 Spring term, one of the math teachers, went over each student’s progress in front of the entire class. When he came to Kees’ name, he said, “Van Pelt, you would greatly benefit if we had a “C Track” available for you. One without any math or languages.” It wasn’t so much that he disliked either math or languages, but he despised the teachers in De Populier , and did poorly as a result. Leendert had visions of Kees becoming an architect, and math was a pivotal step along that path. Even after the laughter in the classroom died down following the teacher’s mocking of Kees’ academic abilities, Kees’ anger did not. So on his way home, he swung over to the public high school only a stone’s throw from the Margrietstraat. In the process of meeting the people controlling admissions at the Dalton, Kees had to convince them that they were dealing with a serious student, who was eager to learn. But they agreed to accept him conditionally. Kees was thrilled that he could forever put the people in De Populier behind him. The next, and bigger problem would be to inform his parents. He did not want to tell his mother first, so he instead waited for dinner time, when his father would be present. He timed his announcement that he quit De Populier for a moment when his father had just taken a big bite of food, calculating that he would at least have to think about things for a few moments before speaking. At least that was the plan. The reaction came with speed and force. The fuse was lit, and the explosion followed immediately.

van Pelt

The Dalton HBS was just one block over and one block up from Margrietstraat 20. By cutting through the field across the street, it was even quicker to get to high school.

Five Brothers and a War

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