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When Jan Dekker, just 16 years old, returned home in 1972 after his first day as an apprentice machinist, he knew for sure: his future was not going to be with the Royal Company De Schelde. “I said to my father: ‘Well, I’m not staying there for a year! How sadly mistaken one can be… it turned out to be 50.” And now, 18,278 days on, Jan is retiring. We look back at his remarkable career: from gears to glass negatives and from digital telephone directory to caretaker.
Jan Dekker is ready to enjoy his retirement.
“In 1972, when you graduated from the LTS, you had two choices: De Schelde shipyard in Vlissingen or the Vitrite factory in Middelburg,” Jan explains. “I come from a real Schelde family; my father instilled that in me. Since 1 September, for the first time since 1 July 1945, there has been no Dekker from our family running the company.” And so the choice was easy for Jan: he started at the Schelde. “On that first day I was crammed into an overall with heavy shoes and I only knew a few people. I had just left the LTS, I was pale and shy, but after a while I got used to it. It also helped that I had nice colleagues.”
Jan finished the in-house training in 1974 and worked on a milling machine in the Machinefabriek where he made parts such as small gears for Sulzer engines. In the turbulent 1970s, there was a major strike at De Schelde, and Jan’s willingness to continue working was not welcomed by everyone. “Striking was against my principles and because of that decision I did not go down well with a number of the fanatical colleagues. In the early 1980s, my manager came to me and told me that he had a good job for me at head office. The archivist was seriously ill and I was lent to Head Office. After his death I applied and got the job.”
In 1983, Jan started in the General Secretariat Department as Central Archives Administrator and from 1988 he started working as a Telefax and Telex Operator. He adds: “Our photo archive contained over 100,000 photos and negatives, some of which were still glass negatives. It was quite a job to keep it up to date. And I even drew illustrations for the paper version of the Schelde Schakels.” In addition, he later became responsible for the internal paper telephone directory that was published twice a year. “At that time, there were about 2,500 people working at De Schelde and we had more than 1,300 internal telephone connections, so the telephone directory was an important and bulky document.”
In addition to all his other activities, Jan occasionally produced sketches for the paper edition of Schelde Schakels.
After the first computers were introduced in the company in 1985, the idea of digitising the directory arose in the early 1990s. Jan was closely involved in the design and management of the digital telephone directory, which still forms the basis for the current telephone directory on the Intranet. Jan: “Together with Information Services, we spent over a year getting the directory ready for use. In those days you could sort by function, by department or even by gender of the employees.”
In the past fifty years, Jan has also been responsible for the management of the Mailroom, the Magazine Library and the Photo Archive as well as the presentation and meeting rooms. “In those years, three to four mail bags came in every day and the same amount of mail was also sent out every day. Mail and Internet did not exist, so all business correspondence went through the post. The Christmas period was always extremely busy.”
"I am proud to have been part of this company for 50 years. It is a complex company with a beautiful history and it is still a great place to work.” Jan Dekker
From 1998, Jan was caretaker for the head office for several years. “I remember the first visit of the Damen management very well; on 11 September 2001. Because I took care of the television on the big screen in the presentation room, I was called into the meeting to find the right channels. We then followed the developments around 9/11 on the big screen, constantly switching between NOS, CNN, NBC, BBC and so on,” he recalls.
After the takeover by Damen and the subsequent reorganisation, Jan ended up in the ICT department in 2002. There he started at the Helpdesk and worked on, among other things, the first line and the mobile telephony, which had been on the rise since 1997. After a brief stint at Amels (which had just started in Vlissingen after moving from Makkum) where he coordinated the ICT work, he eventually became Manager of Mobile and Fixed Communications.
“That was a big deal because mobile communications in particular were becoming more and more important,” Jan says. “I think I installed and issued about 5,000 GSMs, iPacs, Blackberrys, iPads, iPhones, and Smartphones from 1998 onwards, in the beginning for all Vlissingen Schelde/Damen companies.” He also continued to do some administrative Helpdesk duties. “In the past years I have created about 2,300 Windows accounts and mailboxes for new employees. I was involved in the digital telephone directory until the very last, because every new account is automatically added. And nowadays this is accompanied by a photo.”
Conductor Jan has performed with one of his choirs in the entrance hall at the Head Office.
A nice detail: in recent years Jan sat in the same spot where his father’s drawing board once stood. “My father worked at De Schelde from 1945 to 1987, but we didn’t actually see each other at work. I first worked in the Machinefabriek and my father was in the drawing office at the head office. I found photos showing that his desk then and my office at the Help Desk were in almost the same place.”
In addition to his work at De Schelde and Damen, Jan, now 66, has had his own mini campsite for nearly 25 years and has been the conductor of various Walcheren choirs for over 30 years. With the Walcheren Male Voice Choir, he has even tested the acoustics in the Timmerfabriek, the Metal Works and the Head Office. “Of course with the permission of the director, who gave us some valuable tips about the space, the sound and the arrangement of the choir.”
Although he has been on leave since November 2021, he has officially retired since 1 September. “I am now going to do other things that I like. Together with my wife Annelies, whom I will have been married to for 40 years next year, we still rent out a summer house and a B&B. I like to cycle, collect things, and read a lot. I was afraid that the transition might be very big, but the corona pandemic and the fact that we worked from home so much as a result, allowed me to slowly withdraw and get used to the idea of retirement,” he says. “I have enjoyed working here all these years. I am proud to have been part of this company for 50 years. It is a complex company with a beautiful history and although it is a very different company now than it was in 1972, it is still a great place to work.”