Remembering Jan Verhoeven
Jan joined this club fifty-two years ago, rowed in its first winning eight, and then spent five decades making sure other people got the chance to do the same. He died at home on Sunday, at seventy-seven, after a short illness.
He coached the juniors for thirty-one years without ever holding a formal position, on the grounds that a title would have meant meetings. Three generations of members learned to hold a blade under his instruction, most of them badly at first, all of them eventually.
There are no bad crews. There are crews who have not yet agreed on what they are doing.
The funeral is on Friday at eleven. The club will be closed that morning, and there will be an outing in his memory on the Sunday for anyone who would rather be on the water than in a room.
His family have asked that anything given in his memory goes to the junior squad. The committee has agreed that the next junior quad will carry his name.
Tags: club, members