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"Afternoon With Hetty" to Benefit Crestline
Beautification Efforts
By Lee Reeder
 Between
Christmas and New Year’s this year, artist Hetty Wissema will be
celebrating 20 years of living in Crestline. The 81-year-old impressionist
painter and professional floral designer wouldn’t have it any other
way—spending her days painting, creating floral designs, and enjoying
her mountain home, which is filled with her art, and is a work of art
in itself.
On Sunday, Sept. 24, mountain residents will have an opportunity to spend
“An Afternoon With Hetty,” where she will showcase several
of her floral designs and original paintings. She will also demonstrate
for visitors how to create simple, yet beautiful floral designs and tabletop
plant displays.
The event will take place on the terrace at the Tudor Pines Lodge at
23360 Crest Forest Drive from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. An opportunity drawing
will be held for one of Hetty’s original paintings as well as all
of the floral arrangements featured during the afternoon. Tickets will
be sold at the event, and proceeds will go to buy daffodil bulbs for Mountain
Beautiful’s community planting efforts in Crestline.
This remarkable, lively octogenarian has much knowledge to share about
floral design, but she also has many stories to tell.
Hetty Wissema was born in 1925 in the Netherlands, and was raised from
the age of 2 months, according to Hetty, by “wonderful foster parents.”
At the age of 10, her birth parents opened a large restaurant in Arnhem,
and brought the family back together. Hetty worked in the restaurant.
In mid-September 1944, Arnhem became one of the last places anyone who
lived in Western Europe would want to have a home—the epicenter
of Operation Market Garden, the massive and disastrous Allied airborne
assault of Europe, and the site of the last great victory for the Germans
in World War II. Hetty was 19 when an allied bomber crashed on the family’s
property adjacent to the restaurant.
 “I
was picking fruit and flowers in the yard, and I kept hearing this ‘boom,
boom, boom,’ and we didn’t know what it was,” Hetty
said. “We soon found out they were bombing the German Kasernes (barracks)
on the other side of the Rhine. A little later I heard more noise. It
was the Allies landing there.”
She described the huge planes towing gliders that were being released
and were landing throughout the area, loaded with soldiers and guns, vehicles
and other equipment. People in Arnhem and the surrounding countryside
soon found themselves in the middle of a massive invasion.
Hetty and others went out to meet the invaders. “We ran over to
the Allies, and they came out with their trucks and cannons,” she
said. “One soldier said, ‘You better go home to your basement
because we’re going to have problems here.’”
For the next day it was quiet, but soon, according to Hetty. “The
noise was unbelievable,” she said. “After three days, my father
said he didn’t hear the people speaking English anymore.”
The family stayed in the cellar of the restaurant for six weeks, until
the Germans had driven the Allies back and out of the area. The Germans
took all of the young men 16 years and older and sent them to work in
factories. The rest were told that the entire area would be made into
minefields and defensive positions, and the residents had to leave.
Hetty went to Amsterdam and lived with various relatives. It was here
that she began to learn the florist trade and professional floral design
in her Uncle Stalling’s florist shop. In May 1945 she was able to
move back to Arnhem.
Hetty soon married and had two children. Her husband, Ruurd, was drafted
at one point and went off to fight in Indonesia. After being back home
for a few years, he became restless, and decided to move to America. Hetty
agreed and emigrated with 6-year-old son Ruurd (“Rudy”) and
8-year-old daughter Anneke in the winter of 1957.
Before moving to Crestline in 1986, Hetty lived for 23 years in El Monte.
She worked for 12 years at Tri-Community Adult Education Center in the
Charter Oaks School District teaching florist technique and then for 11
years at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut teaching florist technique
and floral design.
In 1970, she began painting. It was a natural progression for her. “Working
with flowers is a very creative field if you like colors,” Hetty
said. “My painting also involved bold color combinations, depth
and flow. When you are flowing in your floral design you can be flowing
in your other art.”
The Sept. 24 event is billed as an afternoon of inspiration and an opportunity
to donate to the beautification of Crestline. The public is invited for
learning and refreshments. Please RSVP to Roxanna Nisson at 909-338-6255.
Mountain Beautiful’s community action projects include the Annual
Garden Tour, the Daffodil and Wildflower Project, the Fletcher Park Project,
and gardening education through professional sharing and volunteer gardeners.
Mountain Beautiful is a committee of the Crestline Communities Development
Alliance.
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