The Amsterdam Club owes its origin to two Dutchmen who had both
experienced Rotary in the United States. During the first World
War when Holland was neutral, Jan van Tyen who had been living in the
U.S.A. for some years, became a member of the RC of Port Arthur,
Texas. Whilst he was there, he received a written request signed by
Ches Perry at the Rotary HQ in Chicago, to ask if he could help take
Rotary to The Netherlands.
About the
same time, another Dutchman,
Anton Verkade on a business trip in 1919, visited some American Rotary
Clubs among them the Seymour Club of Indiana. During this visit,
he went to Chicago and there was entertained at
Comely Bank by Paul
Harris, who urged him to try to start a Dutch Rotary Club.
It appears that neither
Perry nor Harris knew of the other's involvement, a situation similar
to that some years earlier in Britain. Luckily, when both were back in
Holland, Jan van Tyen and Anton Verkade contacted each other and
pooled their enthusiasm. They were joined by Bert Snijder and
George Brusse. Bert and George also knew about Rotary in the U.S.A.
and probably had also attended
some of the clubs there.
Anton and the three others held
talks about starting Rotary in Amsterdam and also in Utrecht.
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There, J. van Dillen and H.A.M.van Hoffen became actively interested.
H.A.M.van Hoffen moved to Amsterdam and became the fifth member of the
new Amsterdam Club. Throughout most of 1922, the interim club there
held weekly meetings,and the following year, on 10 March 1923, the RC
of Amsterdam was chartered. The Dutchmen were helped by John
Bain Taylor of the RC of London who had also been involved earlier in
the formation of a Rotary club in Paris. Anton Verkade was
President of the RC of Amsterdam from the beginning until 28 April
1925.
During the 1939/45 war, Rotary
was banned by the Germans as it had been in all the other occupied
countries of Europe, and Harris wondered what had happened to Verkade
and the many other Rotarians now prevented by the Germans from Rotary
pursuits. When the Occupation and the war ended in 1945, the 4 men who
had originally brought Rotary to The Netherlands, restarted the RC of
Amsterdam. All former members had to be screened.
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