Jacqueline Gerritsen

Jacqueline (Jackie, Lien) Koolhaas Gerritsen of West Lafayette, Indiana and Allenspark, Colorado, died peacefully on Tuesday, August 10, 2010. She is survived by her children, Rob Gerritsen (partner: Estelle Brand) of Blue Bell, PA, and Jeroen Gerritsen (wife: Jingyee Kou) of Baltimore, MD; by her ex-daughter-in-law, Joyce Metcalf Gerritsen of Merion, PA; by her grandchildren, Keith Gerritsen (wife: Kate Sundeen), Corey Gerritsen (wife: Sara Elice), Jeffrey Gerritsen, Tristan Gerritsen, and Alida Gerritsen; by her great-grandson, Liam Gerritsen; and by her brother, Marinus Koolhaas, and sisters-in-law, Corry Westra-Koolhaas and Wop Gerritsen in The Netherlands.
Jacqueline Koolhaas was born on April 29, 1912, in Leiden, the Netherlands, to Jacob Marinus Koolhaas and Maria Geertruida de Bruijn. She was the third of seven children, and was given the tasks of mending clothes and tutoring mathematics to one of her younger brothers. She entered Leiden University in 1931 to study physics, at a time when girls were not encouraged to study the sciences. There she earned bachelor and doctoranda (roughly equivalent to master&s) degrees in physics and met her future husband, Alexander (Lex) N. Gerritsen. They married September 27, 1943, in Leiden at the depth of World War II. During the German occupation of the Netherlands, they assisted the underground resistance by passing papers and forged documents. Their sons were born in 1946 and 1951.
She immigrated to West Lafayette in 1956 with her husband and 2 sons. She worked as senior editor at Center for Information and Numerical Data Analysis and Synthesis (CINDAS) at Purdue University; a publisher of abstracts and data on the properties and behavior of materials. She and Lex retired from Purdue in 1979, and split their time between West Lafayette and a summer cottage in Allenspark, Colorado.
Although she had a career in physics and physical chemistry, her first love was always art. At the age of 18 she had an extended illness, and during her recovery was given a set of watercolors. She first taught herself to draw and paint at that time. After that, when time and money allowed, she also took art lessons to improve her skills. She was an active member of the Lafayette Art Association during much of her life in West Lafayette (now Art Museum of Greater Lafayette), as well as the Wabash Valley Watercolor Society and the Wabash Weavers Guild. In Colorado she joined a local artists group, the Allenspark Hilltop Guild. In later years she returned to watercolors and became an accomplished Indiana artist, with realistic colors and three-dimensional appearance in her paintings, winning awards at regional exhibitions. Several of her works are at University Place, in the permanent collection at the Greater Lafayette Art Museum, at the Lilly Nature Center in the Celery Bog Nature Area and at other locations in the Greater Lafayette area.
Throughout her life, Jackie made many close and lifelong friends of all ages. She had an intuitive feel for card games, word games, and puzzles, and almost always won family card and Scrabble games.
She had curiosity about the world and was concerned with global issues. She was a member of the American Humanist Association, and read widely on religious and societal issues. She was greatly concerned with the plight of children in the Third World and in war zones, and always gave generously to UNICEF.
A remembrance will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday, August 21 at University Place, 1700 Lindberg Road, West Lafayette, with reception immediately following. The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be given in Jackie&s memory to UNICEF or to the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette.