(Story & Photos by Marco Stoovelaar)
IN MEMORIAM
...Henk van Ede...
(1933 - 2017) |
 Former Pirates-chairman and Amsterdam-administrator Henk van Ede passed away
Nederlands
 ZWANENBURG (Neth.) -
Henk van Ede, who led the baseball- and softball-club Amsterdam Pirates for 25 years as its Chairman, had passed away unexpectedly on Thursday (March 16) at the the age of 83.
The memorial and cremation service will be held on Thursday, March 23 at Crematorium Westgaarde at the Ookmeerweg 275 in Amsterdam.
The ceremony begins at 2 PM.
Hendrik Karel van Ede, who was born, raised and always lived in Amsterdam, has a long history with Amsterdam Pirates and its predecessor Rap.
In February 1959, the Amsterdam-based soccer-club Rap founded a baseball-section for the second time in its history.
Earlier, the club had a baseball-section in the thirties and early forties.
A few years after Rap again started playing baseball, Henk van Ede became involved.
He played for the main squad and then was its first-ever Coach, leading the team in 1964-1966 when in played in the highest league in then-existing Amsterdam-region.
Van Ede guided the team to second place in 1966, resulting in promotion the national third division.
Towards the end of 1966, Rap merged with HVA, which then played in the highest division.
Rap opted to play in the second highest division (First Division) and became a very respectable and successful club.
In the sixties, Van Ede also became a member of the board of the club, which also had added a softball-section by then.
Van Ede became the chairman and led the club for 25 years.
He retired early 1993 and was named Honorary Chairman.
That ended a long period with a very solid board, with very little changes throughout the years.
This board also included longtime administrators as Jaap van der Zee (secretary), Leo Boon (secretary), Maarten van Erk (treasurer) and Loek Loevendie (member).
...Former boardmembers reunited at the...
...50th anniversary of Amsterdam Pirates in 2009...
...Left to right: Loek Loevendie, Rob Carstens,...
...Jaap van der Zee, Tiny van der Poel,...
...Wim van der Poel, Henk van Ede and Maarten van Erk...
(© Photos: Marco Stoovelaar) |
Many things happened through the years when this board led the club.
Under their leadership, the club became independent in 1974 and continued as Amsterdam Pirates.
Foreign players (first Canadians, later Americans) were added to the main squad, a big new clubhouse was built, both the baseball- and softball-team promoted to the big league, sponsor-contracts were signed.
And in 1987, Amsterdam Pirates became the baseball-champion of the Netherlands for the first time.
Both the baseball- and softball-teams went on to participated in European Cup-tournaments with the softball-team winning the Cup Winners Cup twice.
In the meantime, the club grew, was also very success with its youth-teams and a lot of players were selected for National Teams.
Besides being active for Amsterdam Pirates, Henk van Ede also served as an administrators for several years in the so-called Amsterdam-District.
He was a member of its Financial Committee, Publicity Committee and School-Baseball Comittee
In 1970-1971, Henk van Ede was the Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Amsterdam-District, then in 1983-1984 was its Secretary.
In 1985, Van Ede took over as chairman and led Amsterdam for one year.
He also was a representative for Amsterdam-based clubs at Council Meetings of the Netherlands Federation for eight years in the seventies and early eighties.
Henk van Ede always was a relaxed administrator, had a lot of humour, could be very serious when needed, but also was very driven and close to the activities of Amsterdam Pirates.
Being a longtime club-chairman, he also had an influential voice, because of his vision of what he wanted with his club and for baseball in general.
He was well-liked by the clubmembers of Pirates and well-respected by other administrators of other clubs.
Despite some health problems in the past few years, Henk van Ede remained a frequent visitor of games of his beloved Amsterdam Pirates.
He will surely be missed by the Pirates-family.
The webmaster of Grand Slam * Stats & News offers his condolences to Henk van Ede's daughters Laura, Kim and Esther and other family and wishes them a lot of strength with this big loss.
(March 20)
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