Language, Literature, and Love

The English Department community has nurtured intense working partnerships as well as lifelong friendships. For Julia de Vreese and Wim Klooster, the connections made while working and studying there also led to marriage. When Wim Klooster was working on his doctoral dissertation in the 1960s, he gave each draft chapter to his supervisor, Professor Andries Vos, via the department secretary, Julia de Vreese. The couple first got together after a departmental meeting that eventually ended with everyone—Professor Vos included—attending a party at Julia’s house. The closeness of department members played out the next day, when Julia went out to get breakfast and ran into Professor Vos’s mother. Knowing that Vos lived at his mother’s house and that his overnight absence would have been noticed at home, Julia reassured her, crying, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Vos, your son is alright!” Wim and Julia married in 1973.