Oma & Opa

When we Heytvelts and Kinerks and Carlsens look back to where we came from we find a bit of history. Our grandparents, Lou and Nell Heytvelt, were part of that immigrant throng that crossed the ocean to make a new home in a new world in the early years of the last century. Oma & Opa tells, in part, of their struggles. Lou, an ironworker, and Nell, a seamstress, were newlyweds from Haarlem, Holland, when they reached Kansas City, Kansas, in 1913. Both put their skills to work, first in Kansas and then in Seattle, Washington, building a new life for themselves and their children.

The first part of Oma & Opa is a memoir written by their daughter, Mary 'Kick' Carlsen, who is the driving force behind this book; additional material is added by their son, Louis Heytvelt. These memoirs tell of the joys and sorrows of Oma and Opa's early life together. The second part skips ahead to when Lou and Nell were grandparents to a brood of sixteen. Those sixteen grandchildren pool their memories and bring to life a fondly remembered world, one where the boys raced to meet their grandfather when he got off the trolley from work, where grandmother's wringer washer churning on the porch fascinated wide-eyed youngsters, where fish got caught, cookies got baked, and foul balls got collected at games played by the old Seattle Rainiers.

The material and photographs were gathered, arranged and organized by grandson, Robert Kinerk, who had the help of his wife, Anne Warner, in getting it ready for the publisher.