Hendrika Weegenaar, nee Hildering, was born on June 11, 1926, in Scheveningen den Hague, the Netherlands — the youngest of six children.
Her son, David Weegenaar, said there was a special moment at her birthday when she got to meet her new 6-month-old great-great-grandson.
‘‘It was just real — it was a spiritual connection between them ... and it was like no-one else was there.’’
Mrs Weegenaar and her late husband came to New Zealand from the Netherlands in 1952 wanting a ‘‘fresh start’’ after living through the Nazi invasion of her homeland in the 1940s.
When war broke out for the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, his grandmother knelt down at his mother’s bedside and prayed ‘‘please protect my precious daughter’’, Mr Weegenaar said.
‘‘Mum would joke that her mother’s words were still working. ‘The Lord’s still got me, he still has me here’.’’
During the war years, his mother was living on a farm in Utrecht.
She would ride her bike around, searching for food, and was once run off the road by German soldiers.
‘‘She didn’t run, didn’t flinch — she was ready to accept whatever was coming ... but she wasn’t going to show weakness — that is who she is.’’
It was not until after the war ended his mother met his father, Jan Weegenaar, in The Hague, where he was working as an accountant.
They were then engaged, and soon decided they wanted to head to New Zealand for a fresh start.
They boarded Sibayak in December 1951 and, along with 898 other Dutch nationals, migrated to New Zealand. After a six-week journey by sea, they took a train to their new home in Dunedin.
They were married in Knox Church in 1953 and, in 1954, had their first child, a daughter named Hendrika, who sadly died two days later.
They then had five more children: Wilhelmina, Aletta, Elisabeth, David and Johannes.
Mrs Weegenaar has 16 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.
There was no trick to reaching 100, but his mother ‘‘smoked like a trooper in the trenches somewhere’’, Mr Weegenaar said.
‘‘But she said ‘I didn’t inhale’.’’
