The Joint Archives Quarterly

[Editorial note: This past summer the staff at the archives completed a thoughtful examination of the lives of the parents of the baby boomer generation. During the eighteen individual interviews, this unique group’s experiences during World War Two and life after the war were relived, for many, for the first time. As their memories unfolded, the experiences they faced--like coming to grips with work, marriage, parenthood, and the boundaries of family relationships--came alive. With the project we have learned how this generation set the stage for the economic change for post war America and the social changes of the 1960s and beyond. Their experiences included life around the world and in the Holland area, as well as the drawing and redrawing of gender roles, renegotiated in family after family as children grew and income fluctuated.

With the completion of this project we have added a previously uncollected resource to the already rich oral history holdings at the Joint Archives, initiated in 1977 with the help of Dr. Elton Bruins.]

It would only be fair to begin by mentioning that John Steensma lost both of his arms in an electrical accident while still a young man. But as you would hear from his tape this only strengthened his character as he moved beyond a factory job to do much more for the world community. The story of John’s wife, Juliana, encompasses her upbringing in Iowa, an education at Calvin College, and the impact she and her husband had on veterans and disabled persons in many countries.

"I met John accidentally when I went over to visit my relatives on the west side of Grand Rapids. I didn’t have any money, so when John saw me standing on the corner waiting for the bus, he took his car and drove over there and said,'Where are you going? Can I give you a ride?' I knew who he was because I had seen him in church, and of course I was curious about him because he looked different than other people. I had asked people, 'How did this guy get this way?' They said he had been electrocuted in an accident and had these artificial hands, but he was a nice fellow and could do anything. I was curious about what went on in this nice fellow’s head. So all the way across town in this car I talked to him."

From there their relationship began as they felt the rigors of college.

"I met John in 1942. He had started Calvin, and I promised him that if he went to Calvin I would help him with his schoolwork and his typing and so forth. He didn’t do anything but study."

Before John and Juliana graduated from college they made a mark in the world. After reading a Saturday Evening Post article by a man named McGonagel who professed that we must be ready for the influx of amputees coming back from this war, Juliana came up with the idea to have John do some public speaking about his experiences with a disability. After winning a public speaking contest at Calvin College, a state contest, and eventually the interstate contest, he was invited to speak all over the area and was paid handsomely. With this money they were able to finance their wedding.

When they heard that McGonagel was going to come to Grand Rapids to speak at the Lions Club, John and Juliana went to try to meet the man that had inspired them.

"It was V-E Day and I said to John, 'Let’s cut school, everybody is cutting on V-E Day, and let’s crash that Lions Club luncheon.' So we went downtown to the Pantlind Hotel where the Lions Club was meeting. I said to the doorman, 'We just came here to meet McGonagel.' They noticed that John had two hooks, invited us in to be their guests, sat us at the head table, and introduced us to McGonagel."

After the meeting, McGonagel convinced John and Juliana to drive him to Battle Creek, and he inquired about their plans for the future. John responded that he was going to seminary and Juliana had a contract to teach at Lee High School. McGonagel asked them if they would consider working at Percy Jones Hospital. They talked it over, and when they got to Battle Creek, they interviewed with the major in charge and both were hired to teach on the wards in the Army hospital.

They quickly arranged their wedding to take place sooner than originally planned. They married right after V-E Day and took on roles at the hospital. John taught the veteran amputees physical therapy and Juliana worked as a nurse.

"There were lots of 'Dear John' things. That was one reason that I was hired because I was young, reasonably good looking, and had married a man who had both arms off. I had never known him any other way. This was the big morale thing as far as I was concerned. I would bring John on the ward often and introduce him to these men, and to them that was a great thing, you know, 'If you can do it, I can do it too.'"

After seven months Juliana left to have their first child while John worked for eighteen months. The war ended, and the jobs ended with the war.

With the influx of veterans returning from the war, housing was difficult to come by. John and Juliana moved back to Grand Rapids into the remodeled upstairs of John’s mother’s house. This was by no means a comfortable situation.

"We lived in that upstairs for five years, right under the roof. It was hot as blazes in the summer, and in the winter we had this gas stove with a fan behind it to push the heat into the front room."

During this time the Steensmas had their first two children which further confined the small space they were already living in. But after five years they were able to put a down payment on their own house

As their lives began to settle down, the couple toiled in Grand Rapids to support a family. After John chose not to follow his idea of going to seminary, he opened a Michigan Crippled Children’s Commission office in Grand Rapids and became an instructor for amputees using prosthetics. After a number of years in Grand Rapids, a new opportunity arose when an aging Christian missionary was looking for a replacement and world mission director for Korea. John accepted and eventually took over the direction of a missionary program that centered around aiding the handicapped.

“That was the most successful eight years of my life because it was totally supported by Christians around the world. There was no government intervention, no beaurocracy to deal with, I could do my own thing."

Moving to the other side of the world wasn’t easy at first. John was often on the move, filling in where he was needed, teaching rehabilitation, while Juliana found herself immersed in the culture. She began teaching English to Koreans, who saw the language as a ticket to success. She also was a writer in an English-Korean newspaper published in the capital city of Seoul.

"We found raising children in Korea easier than we first thought because the children were much more content and had a wider area to play in outside the city, and they had American playmates. We didn’t have the same problems that people in America had. It was an exclusive bunch of people. They were all children of dedicated and very educated people. Our children learned to be independent while at the same time they grew up without prejudice because of the diversity of peoples at the mission."

Eventually the Steensmas returned to the states where John became coordinator of the rehabilitation department at Jackson Memorial Hospital at the University of Miami Medical Center. He worked there for 18 years until his retirement. During this time Juliana earned a master’s degree and worked with veterans in the same hospital. Later, they spent a year in China organizing a handicapped program and did relief work for the Christian Reformed Church in Mississippi. In 1997 John addressed a U.N. gathering on disabilities in South Korea.

The relationship between Juliana and John is enviable. John says, “If it hadn’t been for Juliana I wouldn’t be sitting here today talking to you. We wouldn’t have traveled to thirty-five countries and worked in Korea.” John and Juliana are true individuals devoted to helping others. It is best said in his own words, "I know and you know that there are prejudices against people with obvious disabilities. That’s their problem, not mine."