Johanna de Vries

Johanna was born in Zwolle on 12 April 1938, the eldest of five children. Her father kept a vegetable garden on the edge of town, and there she learned early on that with patience and good soil you can grow almost anything. She read to her little brothers and sisters every evening, and it surprised no one when she later became a teacher.

At teacher training college in Deventer she learned not only her profession but also met Gerrit, a friend of her brother's who was always late and always had a joke ready. They married in 1962 in the Grote Kerk in Zwolle. They danced until late into the night, and according to the family, Gerrit brought her coffee in bed every morning until the very end.

In 1964 they moved to Utrecht, to the house on the Lindelaan where Johanna would live for the rest of her life. She started at the Wilhelmina School, where she taught for almost forty years. Anyone who had been in Mrs de Vries's class never forgot it: she knew every child by name, even twenty years later at the bakery. On Friday afternoons she read aloud from De Kameleon, a much-loved Dutch children's series, and she always stopped at the most exciting moment.