Five Brothers and a War

Postscript: Cornelis (“Kees”) van Pelt

Eventually, the rigors of manual labor, and the spottiness of paychecks dependent on good weather, encouraged Kees to find other employment. He took a job selling life insurance—a job with the distinct downside of having to get young people to spend precious resources on the unpopular concept of their own mortality. While that was not what he really wanted to do with his life, Kees did discover his knack for creating a visually-based sales system that greatly stimulate sales. The idea was to use miniature props to show people why they needed to do what they had an aversion to doing on an irrational basis. He did very well, but still found the work of making money by protecting people from death-based financial ruin to be unpleasant. The second child, Jeannette Benedicte (named after the Danish princess Benedikte, who was ten years old at the time of Jeannette’s birth) was born mid-1954. Their third, Richard Peter was added 19 months later in early 1956 and finally Edwin Alexander was born in 1959. What is interesting in the naming of the four children is the migration from Dutch to Canadian names. “Leendert” was the oldest boy of the new generation of van Pelts. “Jeannette” was a common Dutch name, and “Benedicte” was very much European, though not at all Dutch. “Richard” was very much English, and “Peter” was an anglicized version of “Pieter”. By the time the name “Edwin Alexander” was used, the transformation was complete. To further the naming discussion, Leendert Derrick “Leo” named his 1977 firstborn “Leendert Derek”, who then named his 2008 firstborn “Xander Leendert Derek”, thereby continuing the most predominant family given name. As Kees and Flora were building their family, Kees was still looking for work that was satisfying. He concluded that his interest in sales methodologies and marketing techniques was something he use as a foundation for a career.

van Pelt

As a means of conveying the need for people to carry life insurance, Kees developed a series of visuals to show the future expenses of those loved ones left behind after a death. Mortgage, gasoline, heating fuel, groceries, funeral expenses, etc. are all covered.

Five Brothers and a War

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