Beltman the Founder to Beltman the Grandson
We owe a lot to our organisers who have long been a devoted part of Intervac, Roel and Willemien Eissen among them. They have been responsible for excellent membership development in the Netherlands since 1978. Recently Roel, writing about our history, said:
You can read on our Faces of Intervac page, in 1953, there began formal contact between the Dutch National Teachers Union (NOV) and the Swiss Teachers Union (SLV). At various Congress-Meetings, Mr. Gerrit Beltman for the Netherlands (NL) and Mr. Lehmann for Switzerland, go to know each other well and privately started to make home-exchange holidays.
This idea of home-exchange worked so well, they extended and developed it further to benefit the members of their Unions. Many successful holidays later this is the seed that has developed into our worldwide Intervac organisation.
All this has struck my mind again, after I had not thought about our history it for some time. However, it suddenly hit my attention when I had a pleasant telephone-conversation some weeks ago with one of our NL-members. The lady just told me, that her husband is a grandson of Mr. Beltman.
Home Exchange – A Family Way of Life
Not only has home exchange really enriched our lives with many nice contacts and stories of holidays, friendships, but I am also very pleased to know that the name Beltman is still enthusiastically being used inside Intervac.
If you are interested in exchanging with our now-famous first-family in the Netherlands, here is a link to their listing.
This is part of the Intervac Home Exchange series. Do you have a story yourself? We would love to hear about it! Tell us your story.
