Images of Dirk – Hans van Londen *)

Ladies and gentlemen, family, friends, former colleagues of Dirk,

A couple of days ago, Margje called me. She really didn’t have to day it. Dirk wasn’t among us any longer. You know it’s going to happen, and then still... I told Gerry, my wife, and we spoke about shortly. But then at night, there came a circling of images, thoughts, memories. Images all whirling around each other. With no sequence of time. Those images make up a kind of photo album together, which I would like to go through with you a bit.

First image

Dirk in his role as former land surveyor. He was exceedingly proud for having done that in his life. and reminded us of it repeatedly. Delft University, being versed in exact science, having an eye for spatial range and a sense of spatial orientation. During our walks with the partners of our management consultancy firm Horringa & de Koning, mainly in the Ardennes or on Schiermonnikoog, Dirk would take the lead. Or at least he tried, but Co de Koning was adept at map-reading too. The other partners, including me would quietly wait to see where this colleague’s consultation would lead. The decision came. Over this stretch if barbed wire, straight through this field, with some grazing cows in it. No problem. Come on. They turned out not to be cows but bulls. Running for our lives. Gasping for breath in the barbed wire. But the direction chosen was certainly the right one.

Second image

Dirk shrouded in a great cloud of his favourite gauloises’ smoke. Pacing up and down through the room. Face displaying a heart-felt scorn: subject: the ruinous role of the Dutch fiscal authorities, not only, as it appeared, in his own affairs, but for the entire country, and actually almost for the entire Western world. The tax burden as the murderer of progress.

Third image

Dirk and I are on our way to Belgium, our client Bekaert. Management and strategy problems. I hike along with Dirk. Always would be like that. He is driving. And it’s not like you just leave. First the car is being checked. A Range Rover. See if the baseball bat is at its proper place. Without it there’s no leaving, because the car from time to time would give up and then Dirk knows exactly (his engineer’s schooling) where to hit in order to get going again. The bat is at its place. Donning his special Range Rover gloves. "All set?" Seat-belts fastened? On our way.

Fourth image

First ground-testing talks with the barons of Bekaert now behind us. Dirk was already well up in it all, and in how to proceed. He would be writing down the conclusions of our investigation this evening already. Could I, in the following months, just do that investigation for him in the following months? But take care, there were all kinds of nieces and aunts behind the curtains, ready to stab us in our backs. And was my French up to it? Fortunately, Bekaert turned out to be a Flemish company.

Fifth image

I show up with my first rough drafts. He takes a cursory look at them. I’m looking at his face and what I dreaded, happens: a pouty little mouth, a look of intense all over his face. He returns it without reading any further. If I might just manage to convey to the reader, in proper Dutch, but especially concisely and without all the blabla, what it was all about. Flunked again, heinously. Even now I can feel his critical look.

Sixth image

Didn’t witness this myself. Dirk told us of it, with his characteristic sense of drama, over and over again, and each time told slightly differently. Dirk is driving with his Citroën in the Ardennes. Bad weather, slippery roads. A sudden slide sideways. Not his fault of course, but some lout did something wrong. The car starts to l lurch, swishes around its axis some twenty times and ends up with a bang in the front gable of a house. This house is the only one for miles around. Dirk crawls out of the car, satisfies himself that he can still walk and tries to assess the damage. Walks around the house and sees people away from it at full speed. He at their heels, he overtakes them, and starts asking -in fluent French, of course- what’s wrong. It turns out they’re the inhabitants of the house. They had been in the hindmost room, in a distraught mood because of an accident that had befallen them the day before. Their son had fallen in the mechanic’s pit while repairing a car and was badly injured. Dirk’s car in their front gable was a little too much. Years of litigation.

Seventh image

We had a new bureau policy, supported by all the partners. No cocktail-hours any more at the end of the day. Bad for your health, a bad example for fellow- workers. Things like that. Dirk is sneaking through the hallway. With an attempt to hide the small glass he is carrying in his hand.

Eighth image

Dirk with an article by some management consultancy professor. Unalloyed academic nonsense. Those people really don’t have a clue about things. The universities appoint all kinds of nitwits and simply don’t see the real talents. If only you talk nonsense in abstruse language, you count in the discipline of management consultancy. Don’t have the faintest idea how a company turns a profit. It’s just so much luck that Eindhoven finally sees the light. Dirk enjoyed his professorate, his many students did so even more. Through Dirk’s explanations, they caught on to the utter nonsense expounded in the papers’ financial pages.

Ninth image

Dirk and Boet talking about their little house in Greece. Beautifully situated on the beach, a hundred metres below a restaurant, where they were great friends with owner. Innumerable stories, break-neck adventures, discoveries of perfectly obscure monasteries, only to be reached through scary rock tracks and rope ladders. Told in turn by Dirk and Boet, -who would both all the time hear some new detail of their exploits from the other. Don’t spoil a good story with the truth. Telling stories about their travels, it was their great passion.

Ladies and gentlemen, the rest of the pictures I’ll keep for myself. Dirk was, as his children also say, certainly an impossible man, but he was an unceasingly challenging teacher, a man with pronounced views on right and wrong. He contributed greatly to our profession, had a keel function in our bureau. You couldn’t get around him and, especially because of his sense of humour, you had to love him. An exceptional man has departed from us.

*) partner emeritus of the former management consultancy firm "Horringa en de Koning"