Two friends from Southern California, Saskia Lodder, born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1954, and Carol Tolen, a native of Johannesburg, South Africa who is three years her junior, visited The Alleghany Highlands recently.
Both decided to drive from Tolen’s daughter’s home in Chantilly, Va. to sightsee on the Skyline Drive, and from there, they made their way to visit the Alleghany Highlands.
Lodder’s parents, Ali and Guus Lodder, immigrated to the USA and eventually made their home in Huntington Beach, Ca. where Saskia attended Marina High School where I was varsity baseball and freshmen basketball coach. Our connection there was through Robert Meyer, Saskia’s drama teacher. He and I along with Bob Brouhle, a math teacher at MHS, were renting a beach house in Belmont Shore when she was a senior at MHS in 1972.
Both girls grew up just 20 miles apart with Carol in nearby Long Beach where Saskia received her Bachelors of Science in Nursing from California State University of Long Beach while Carol attended nearby Long Beach City College after high school and began working for General Telephone. Carol married and remained in Long Beach where she still resides. After the pandemic she and her husband plan on driving their RV across country.
Saskia, who has remained single, remarked, “When I came to visit Carol and her daughter’s family in Chantilly, I jumped on the chance to drive on the Skyline Drive to visit Clifton Forge.”
In fact, Brock Pemberton and Carl Thorstad, two of the varsity baseball players on my Vikings’ team at MHS, were friends of Saskia who was in my roommate’s drama club where she was instrumental in helping him produce such musicals as “Mame.”
At the Huntington Beach Yacht Club in the spring of 1972, Pemberton, the only baseball player I coached who played in the Major Leagues, presented me with a unique baseball bat that he and some of his teammates had prepared in woodshop class by splitting several Louisville Sluggers and laminating the pieces together so that bat became shaped like a paddle at its end rather than like the barrel of a regular bat.
Viewing the 49-year-old bat on display at the Buckhorne Country Store and Campground during her visit, Saskia, remarked, “This (bat) has additional meaning in that a group of athletes from my past high school days put this combination of their bats together to make one big one for their beloved coach.”
Tolen, whose father, Simon Vloothuis and mother Miep, also immigrated to the USA after moving from Amsterdam to South Africa, thought that the melding of bats together was very unique.
The two girls became friends during the time they were children. After Saskia’s father and mother, who had settled in Delavan, WI where they lived for 11 months, moved in their 1953 Chevy to Long Beach, they stayed for a month as guests of Simon, Miep and Carol while Saskia’s father secured a job.
Pemberton, our team’s captain, handed me the bat at our baseball team’s awards banquet, and quipped to the audience, “Our team has made this special bat for Coach Allen for his 100th high school coaching win, and we made it so even he can get a hit.”
Thorstad, whose grandfather was Austin Ben Tincup who posted an 8-11 record during his Major League career with Philadelphia and Chicago that was interrupted when he served in World War I, had contacted me via “Facebook” and noted that Saskia was on “Facebook” too.
By then, Thorstad had retired from the police department in Honolulu, HI and moved to Georgia, and Saskia had moved from Los Angeles to accept a position as a nurse in Wisconsin. Soon, Saskia and I became “Facebook” friends, and being an actress, she became interested in The Historic Masonic Theatre.
Saskia noted, “Since first hearing about the Masonic Theatre restoration project, I have been interested in seeing it and Clifton Forge.”
After graduating from CSULB, Saskia began working as a nurse at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach. She was working there when Landon Ray Allen, my son, was born on August 28, 1977 in Saint Mary’s Hospital. While working as a nurse, she moved to Los Angeles and pursed an acting career.
Exactly one year to the day after my son’s birth, I signed a contract to become the varsity basketball coach at Alleghany Country High School where I taught physical education and health.
While living in L.A. in 2000, Saskia had started the adoption process before moving her personal belongings in her truck to WI to be closer to her family. Concerned that moving to WI would jeopardize her chances of being selected by a birthmother in the L.A. area, she learned from her mother that she had been selected upon the day she flew back to the West Coast.
After receiving the good news, she contacted the adoption agency to ask if the birthmother knew that she was moving to WI.
The adoption agency’s representative said, “Sit down! The birthmother is in Wisconsin.”
Saskia, remarked, “If you believe in fate, that situation is a good example.”
Zachary, her adopted son, was born in La Crosse, WI, and Saskia was there at his birthmother’s bedside when she gave birth. Currently, Zachary will enter his junior year at the University of Wisconsin at Stout in Menomonie where he is majoring in psychology.
s for her view of Clifton Forge, Saskia said, “We were pleasantly surprised that a small town has created a cultural center for the arts for people to get together to express their artistic gifts.”
Tolen, who was not yet two when her parents immigrated to Long Beach from South Africa, offered, “I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to come visit the Clifton Forge area because it has piqued my interest to return with my family and Saskia to explore this charming area.”
After I led them on a tour of the theatre except for the Underground Cafe where a reunion was in progress, Saskia observed, “We both think that they did a wonderful job at restoring the theatre to its original grandeur. Now it offers an artistic opportunity to bring the community and tourists a variety of entertainment.”
Although the Clifton Forge School of the Arts was closed, I gave them a tour of the specimen garden where many flowers were in bloom, and they took turns peeking in the windows, even venturing to look at the architecture of part of the underground that is not closed off.
Saskia commented on the beauty of the garden, and confided that the pandemic had kept her from visiting her aunt in Holland due to Covid-19, the virus that took her aunt’s life.
She remembered, “I worked all of 2020 as a trauma program coordinator with my son being home from college, and now, instead of being retired, I’ve been giving vaccinations since January.”
As for her future aspirations, Saskia related, “I’d like to visit Australia and New Zeeland, spend more time in England and Holland and then go on a cattle drive.”
In Wisconsin, she is active as leader of the Scouts BSA (formerly Boy Scouts of America) where she also started a girl’s troop in 2019 after being approached by female Cub Scouts crossing over.
She remarked, “It has been an interesting and satisfying transition.”
Carol has set her sights on camping, traveling and spending time with her grandchildren where she has stayed with her daughter most of 2021 in Chantilly.
After spending the night at the Hampton Inn in Covington, Carol said, “Covington is a rural, quaint industrial town, like a step back in time.”
Saskia praised Covington as well, “It is a beautiful, quiet community that has a vision for attracting the arts.”
“We are both thankful for the opportunity to visit and for the educational tour of the area,” Saskia concluded.
As for MHS’s Vikings, the late Lute Olson, head boys basketball coach when Saskia first enrolled at MHS, has been inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, having led the University of Arizona’s men’s basketball team to the national championship in 1997.
In 2007, the MHS’s boys basketball team set a national high school scoring record for 3-point baskets made in a season by making 437. Saskia and I bid each other farewell by exchanging, “Once a Viking, always a Viking!”
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