Hendrik Brons was born on 3 Oct 1901 in Amsterdam, the third living child of Hendrik
Brons II and Alida Kelner. His father was a diamond honer, and this afforded the family a reasonable standard of living. Henk spent
his entire childhood in Amsterdam, including World War I . Fortunately the Netherlands was neutral during this war. At the age of
14, he left school and he started work as a boy in a trading office. He attended night school and learned to speak German, which was
necessary in the trading sector. Over the years Henk worked his way up the ranks and became a quality inspector of inported
foods and was involved as a food taster.
Hendrik met Maria Margaretha Brugman
while he was learning to play the banjo at music class. They fell in love and were married on 24 Nov 1924 , in Amsterdam.
Over the next 11 years, they had 6 children, 5 boys and 1 girl. Henk worked as a travelling salesman for Kraft, selling cheeses etc.
For most of their marriage, they lived near Ijmuiden, near the North Sea Canal. Maria contracted tuberculosis and her health declined
until she was forced to go to a sanitorium in Berkelo in Gelderland . She died in a hospital in Haarlem on the 19 Feb 1939 ,
aged only 34. Prior to her death, Maria told Henk that she wished to be cremated, but her father being Catholic, strongly oppose this.
Henk went ahead with the cremation, which caused a rift with the Brugman family and the children had little to do with their Brugman grandparents
from that point on.
In September 1939, the Second World War broke out,
and shortly after, Holland was occupied by the German Army. About this time, the family shifted to Zuilen, Utrecht and Henk married
Gertruida Johanna Visee. It was not a happy marriage. After only a short stay in Zuilen, the family shifted to Bussum where they saw
out the rest of the war.During this time, Henk would travel to Amsterdam where he had an office and would trade in food commodities
like vanilla sugar, and surrogate coffee, which was made from burnt wheat. After the war, he expanded his business and went into food
packaging and production of food items such as custards and spreads under the BRONS food label. The business blossomed and Henk
expanded it further, to wholesale merchantising. One very bold venture which could have made him a very wealthy man, ended in
disaster when the coffee shipment that he imported, was placed under embargo by the Americans, and the shipment was sold at a considerable
loss. This was the beginning of a few risky ventures which resulted in Henk selling the business in 1950-51. Shortly afterwards he
went into partnership selling auto spare parts and then owned a 3 acre farm in Beekbergen, Gelderland where he raised chickens.
In the late 1950's he divorced his second wife and a few years later, he shifted to New Zealand, to live amongst his 3 sons and their
families. He was a keen stamp collector & gardener and liked woodworking. Over the 2 years prior to his death while
living in New Plymouth, he had a few heart attacks . On the 9th March 1974, while driving a tractor down to a silage pit,
on his son Gerardus's dairy farm in Reporoa, he suffered a fatal heart attack and died. He was 72 years old. His body was cremated
and his ashes were sent back to Holland to be placed in an urn with his beloved first wife, Maria in the Driehuis-Westerveld
cremetery in south Ijmuiden.