With Jeltje Stracey (neé De Boer), leaving us in January (2016), Walberswick has lost one of its characters.
Jeltje was born in Friesland, Holland, in 1924, and as a young lady on 1939, she retained vivid memories of the German occupation of her rural community in World War Two, with the dangers, atrocities and deprivations it suffered, but also of the courage and resilience of its people. Her own home, with her headmaster father at the helm, became a Door Huis (through house) hiding young Dutch men wanted by the Germans (vide Suffolk Memories, by David Sherriff and Arthur Sharman).
Jeltje began training under the strict regime of nursing in Holland, before advancing her career at the Royal Free Hospital in London, thereafter taking up a supervisory nursing appointment in Bristol, where she met and married Henry Stracey. Henry was a handsome, articulate Old Etonian, who had been invalided out of the Royal Air Force College after a horrific car accident, and was now employed in Regional television, in the West Country, where the two set up home.
The couple moved into White Barn, Leverett’s Lane, Walberswick, in 1981, soon gaining a reputation for lavish, stylish hospitality, and for taking holidays such as the one on the Nile, in boats once the property of King Farouk of Egypt. At home and away they always dressed the part, typically with Henry in Norfolk Jacket and Jeltje in flowing robes, all reminiscent of days gone by.
Sadly, all this came to an end a few years ago when Henry fell ill, was hospitalised, had a leg amputated and died. Perhaps for the first time in her married life, Jeltje took control and showed her in-bred steel by summoning help and issuing commands from her favourite chair in their elegant lounge, her black cat ‘Budda’ on her lap, until anno domini took its toll, and she too fell, ending up in hospital, and finally in the lovely nursing Home, Priory Paddocks, her spirit undiminished, until she died there on 6 January.
The village said farewell to Jeltje Stracey at a service on 13 January 2016, in St Andrew’s Church, Walberswick, with her friend, the Reverend Brian Fisher officiating, during which her niece, Mary Coote, and local Dutch resident, Margaretha Walpole, read eulogies.
(With thanks to Nigel Walpole.)