Tony after receiving his royal honor as a Knight in the Royal Order of Oranje-Nassau.

Thank You Tony Bijkerk (1931-2017)

By David Wallechinsky

One of ISOH’s most cherished and invaluable members, Tony Bijkerk, passed away on December 7, 2017. For many, many years, he was the glue that held our organization together. He will be sorely missed.

Early Life:

Anthony Theodoor Bijkerk was born February 19, 1931, in Bandung, Indonesia, which was then known as the Netherlands East Indies. He spent most of his youth in Batavia, where his father was headmaster of a school. In March 1942, the Dutch surrendered the Netherlands East Indies to Japanese forces and, after a few months, the occupation forces placed all Dutch civilians in internment camps. Tony, his mother, his two brothers and his sister were interned in a large camp called “Tjihapit”. In 1944, he was placed in a boys-only camp within the women’s camp. On May 5, 1945, all the boys were ordered to walk six kilometers with their personal belongings to a nearby all-male internment camp with about 15,000 internees.

After the end of World War II, the Bijkerk family was reunited without loss and repatriated to the Netherlands in May 1946. After completing high school, Tony was admitted to the Royal Naval Academy in Den Helder as a naval cadet on September 12, 1950.

Career:

Three years later, on August 16, 1953, Tony was sworn in as an ensign in the Royal Netherlands Navy, eventually serving as a naval officer for twelve years, including more than five years as a torpedo officer. He left the Royal Netherlands Navy as a lieutenant-commander.

On January 1, 1966, he began work as director for sports and recreation in the city of Leeuwarden and served in this position for twenty-five years, retiring in April 1990. Upon his retirement, he was made a Knight in the Royal Order of Oranje-Nassau.

Sporting Career:

Tony on the medal podium.

In 1948, Tony joined the swimming club H.V.G.B. in Haarlem and soon became a specialist in the backstroke. In both 1949 and 1950, he placed second in the 100-meter backstroke in the national championships. He also played water polo for the same club in the first division of the Netherlands.

In the summer of 1950, Tony was selected as a member of the Dutch national swimming team for the European Championships in Vienna, Austria. However, because the selection process for acceptance into the Naval Academy was scheduled during exactly the same time as the European Championships in Vienna, he had to relinquish his position and opted for a place in the Naval Academy.

Because of his naval career, he was no longer able to compete regularly in swimming meets and only participated in naval and military championships. In 1951, he became national military champion in the 100-meter backstroke. He became naval champion in the backstroke several times and was captain of the water polo team of the Royal Netherlands Navy. He earned his last naval championship in the early 1960s.

Olympic Collection:

In 1960, Tony started an Olympic collection, first with books, and later expanding to all Olympic memorabilia. After collecting for many years, he was invited to organize several Olympic exhibitions, including one in 1984 at the National Sports Centre “Papendal” on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the National Sports Federation. This resulted in an initiative to start research into the possibilities of a national sports museum. In 1987, the “green light” was given to found a “Netherlands Sports Museum” in the province of Flevoland. In 1995, the Netherlands Sports Museum was officially opened in Lelystad, with Bijkerk’s Olympic collection as the basis for the Olympic collection.

The museum was later renamed Netherlands Sports Museum Olympion. When the museum was disbanded in 2004, Tony was able to recover most of his collection.

Between 2015 and 2017, he donated much of his collection, including memorabilia and 4,000 Olympics-related books, magazines and leaflets to the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

Olympic Involvement:

The Netherlands Olympic Committee used to believe that the Netherlands officially took part for the first time in the 1908 Olympic Games. However, in 1960, Tony’s reading turned up the fact that Dutch athletes had competed in the 1900 Paris Olympics, as well as the 1906 Games in Athens. These early discoveries were the beginning of more than forty years of research into Dutch participation in the Olympics.

Because the Netherlands Olympic Committee had never kept track of information about early Dutch participants in the Olympic Games, Bijkerk started research in pursuit of the full names and birth and death dates for these athletes. In only six years’ time, he was able to recover the details for 99.6 percent of all Dutch Olympic competitors. The results of this research were originally published in 1996 in: Het Gouden Book van de Nederlandse Olympiërs, which he published as co-author with another Olympic historian, Ruud Paauw.

With the assistance of specialists in the what had then become the NOC*NSF (Netherlands Olympic Committee/Netherlands Sport Federation) he was able to create a database containing all available information of all the Olympic participants from the Netherlands and made that database also available to be used by the NOC*NSF. It is now used as the basis for the “Olympic Archive” of the NOC*NSF website.

In 2000, he published a book about his findings about the participation of the Netherlands in the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900, titled: Nederlandse Deelnemers aan de Tweede Olympische Spelen – Tijdens de Wereldtentoonstelling Parijs 1900. In 2004, he published another book, this time about all Dutch Olympic participants, titled Olympisch Oranje – Van Athene 1896 tot en met Athene 2004. Four years later an updated and now complete version titled: Olympisch Oranje – Van Athene 1896 tot en met Beijing 2008 was released and again four years later a new and updated version was published titled: Olympisch Oranje – Van Athene 1896 tot en met London 2012. This was the first book containing full data on all the participants from one nation.

The International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH)

As early as 1988, Tony was approached by Dr. Bill Mallon from the United States, with whom he had been corresponding since 1981 about the history of the Olympic Games and about the Dutch participation in them, about the possibility of founding an international platform about the history of the Olympic Movement.

In 1991, he was invited to the founding meeting in London on December 5, 1991. Although he was unable to attend this meeting, he was made a member of the executive committee of the ISOH.

During the first Quadrennial Meeting of the ISOH in Atlanta, during the Olympic Games in 1996, he was elected secretary-general and editor of the Journal of Olympic History. In 2000 in Sydney, and also in Athens in 2004 and Beijing 2008, he was re-elected to the position of secretary-general. He relinquished his position as editor in 2002, but continued as secretary-general until 2016.

On November 9, 2001, at the National Sports Centre of Papendal, he received the IOC’s Olympic Order, which was presented to him by Dutch Olympic champion and IOC member Anton Geesink.

Family:

Tony Bijkerk married May Rustige on October 2, 1954, in Haarlem. They had two daughters, Annelies and Ilka, and one son, Mark. Tony’s beloved wife passed away on January 24, 2004. In addition to his three children, he had five granddaughters.