By JEFF FEBUS

As a soccer coach, Casey TerHaar's familiar touchline refrain was "See what you see!" The phrase was an instruction to his players to see the complete width of the pitch as they progressed the ball up the field.

That same phrase rings true for TerHaar as the things he has witnessed with his own eyes in a remarkable life are vast.

WORLD WAR II: PRISONERS OF WAR

At the age of four, TerHaar, then known as Kees, looked at his father for the first time while walking through the entrance of a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Indonesia.

TerHaar's father Henk was an adjutant major in the Royal Netherlands Indonesian Army and had been sent to a nearby camp four years prior while his son Kees, daughter Ali and wife Marie were sent unknowingly to a camp less than a mile away. Young Kees was just nine months old when the family separation took place. He had no memories of his father while living in harsh conditions for the next four years. His mother Marie was part of a group of women subjected to long days of work in the camp vegetable garden. Lack of production led to severe punishment for the workers and their children, the most noticeable was the withholding of food.

"We were always hungry," said TerHaar. "We would get a little bit of rice and sometimes kill rats that were in our (drinking) water trough and eat them raw. My mother would give up her food rations to help feed my sister and I. Every night before we went to sleep, she would read to us a picture book of Jesus feeding the 5,000. The thing that stayed with me from that story were all the leftovers. We were always hungry as children and the thought of leftover food didn't seem possible."

An end to camp life also didn't seem possible until the summer of 1945. "The Japanese soldiers had all run from the camp and my mother said to us in Dutch, 'Something is happening,'" said TerHaar. "She took us to the front gate where American and Canadian soldiers were bringing Dutch men who had been Japanese war prisoners through the entrance. My mother suddenly said, 'There he is!' and it was my father with his Dutch hat on sideways. I had no idea of what he looked like before, but we ran to him, hugged him and cried tears of joy."

POSTWAR NEXT STEPS

The ensuing years were certainly better but far from easy for the growing TerHaar family The country of Indonesia began to shake off Dutch colonial influence, both politically and economically. In 1949, the Netherlands recognized Indonesian independence. Dutch companies in Indonesia as well as its military and government officials were at risk.

"We had briefly traveled back to the Netherlands in 1949 when my father was on furlough but in 1952, we left Indonesia for good. It had become too dangerous for us," said TerHaar. "We found that there was no real life for our family in the Netherlands either. The post-World War II economy was poor and there were very few jobs."

COMING TO AMERICA

While his father was finishing up his final military duty to draw a government pension, the TerHaar family began looking for a pathway to Canada or the United States. They found one via a wealthy sponsor in the Churchill family located in Jefferyson City, Missouri. In February of 1957, the TerHaar family, now with five children and two adults, sailed from Rotterdam to New York City on a steamship. Once in the United States they trekked across the Midwest by train to Jefferson City where they were set up with a spacious home and automobile. "I remember all of the local television stations and newspapers came to our house to interview us," said TerHaar. "We were the first Dutch family in Jefferson City and were a big story."

The news media coverage led to a s surprise visit from a Dutch family living in Kansas City. Providentially, the visitors brought a folded-up copy of the Christian Reformed Church publication: The Banner, which had contact information on the back of the magazine for Dr. Ralph Danhof, the stated clerk of the Christian Reformed Church, who played a role in relocating Dutch immigrants to CRC communities. A connection between the TerHaar family and Danhof was made and in 1957, the TerHaar family relocated to the northeast side of Grand Rapids.

Prior to relocating to Grand Rapids, the now teenage Kees TerHaar became Casey TerHaar. "We were watching a New York Yankees game on the television that had been provided for us by our sponsor family," he said. "I saw (Yankees manager) Casey Stengel on the broadcast, and I told my father I wanted to be called Casey instead of Kees and my first name changed from that point on."

A SOCCER LIFE TAKES SHAPE

Like Casey Stengel, young Casey TerHaar had a love for competition and sports. During his brief time living in the Netherlands, he participated in playground soccer matches that were frequently played on sand. TerHaar found that he had good speed and an ability to control the ball. This led to a brief tenure with the Dutch soccer club ADO Den Hauge located in the Dutch capitol The Hauge. "I'd play on Saturdays for them," said TerHaar. "It was a good club to learn the game. They are still in the Dutch Second Division and have had a long history of soccer development."

Once in Grand Rapids, he joined a local soccer club called The Be-Quicks which played its home games at Lamar Park southwest of Grand Rapids. The team members saw the potential for TerHaar to become a goalkeeper. "They liked the fact that I was quick and had good reflexes," said TerHaar. "They trained me for two winters at a small local elementary school gym on goalkeeping and I found the new position to be a great fit."

Modern goalkeepers used specialized goalie gloves. TerHaar elected for garden work gloves with the fingertips cut off. "I wanted a little grip, but I wanted to be able to feel the ball with my fingers," said TerHaar. "That's the way I played my entire goalie career. With garden gloves."

TerHaar's training took place while he was a student at Grand Rapids Christian High School. After taking a gap year in 1958 to work, he enrolled at Calvin College and joined the school's inaugural varsity soccer team. He played for the first three head coaches in Calvin men's soccer history, Professors Roel Bykerk (1959), Tony Brouwer (1960) and Marv Zuidema (1961-1997), giving him a unique window seat to Calvin men's soccer history. "They were all great coaches and so much fun to play for," said TerHaar "Coach Zuidema was just starting his coaching career and became a lifelong friend."

The playing pitches were frequently unique. Home games were sometimes near the John Ball Park Zoo and other times at a field in nearby Kentwood that had a fire station located behind a goal. "We had great midfielder from California named Fred Wind," said TerHaar with a slight chuckle in his voice. "He loved to smash balls over the goal to see if he could hit balls against the fire station and put them on the station roof. Coach Zuidema saw that a few times and put a quick stop to it, telling Fred that the firemen were our friends."

On road trips, the team rode a rickety bus known as "The Zion Express" that was driven by a student manager. On one trip to southern Indiana, the bus was loaded with glass bottles full of chocolate milk. The over-eager bus driver attempted to fly over a set of train tracks at high speed. The bus survived. The bottles of chocolate milk did not. "It was a terrible chocolate milk mess in the back of the bus," said TerHaar. "It was also extremely hot so as the day wore on, the stench of the sour milk got worse. We had to live with that smell all the way home."

Calvin found a permanent home in 1962 when it relocated its home games to a field on the north side of its newly purchased Knollcrest campus. The field remained Calvin's home base for the next 60 years.

Success on the new field came in 1962 when the team posted an 8-3-0 record with TerHaar posting five shutouts in goal. Calvin tied Michigan State for the Michigan Collegiate Soccer Conference Eastern Division title. TerHaar was later named Calvin's first ever soccer All-American.

After securing a share of the championship, TerHar and his teammates decided to celebrate in a unique way. "There was a double-seated wooden outhouse at the Knollcrest soccer field," said TerHar. "We had 12 players on a pickup truck and drove the outhouse through East Grand Rapids to the old Franklin campus. We had a police officer stop us and ask us what we were doing but he let us continue with the promised we would not do any damage."
 

The outhouse was positioned in the dead of night by the players on top of an old campus incinerator building that was visible to all the next morning as students walked to class. Calvin president Dr. William Spoelhof had been an intelligence officer during World War II and his intelligence that morning led to TerHaar and a few of his teammates. "We were called into his office that morning and all we could do was confess," said TerHaar with a grin. "Our punishment was to haul the outhouse back down and bring it back without damaging any buildings. It was heavy work, but we found a way to get it back."

As a senior at Calvin in the spring of 1963, TerHaar was invited to the U.S. Olympic training camp with a chance to make the national team for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. A linguistics major, TerHaar turned the enticing opportunity down. "I knew I could not play soccer forever and I was ready to get on with my professional career," he said. "I had the opportunity to go into teaching and I chose that route."

A TIME TO TEACH AND COACH

What followed was a distinguished teaching career of nearly 40 years in secondary education in foreign languages. TerHaar taught, Spanish, German and French. He speaks six different languages and reveled in teaching those skills to students in Grand Rapids Ottawa High School, Grand Rapids Christian High School and Grandville Calvin Christian High School. He stayed close the game of soccer, starting a high school boys program at Grand Rapids Christian High School while helping form the first high school soccer conference in the state of Michigan. His longest high school coaching tenure took place at Grandville Calvin Christian High School. He retired from Calvin Christian in 2001.

In retirement he took his soccer coaching career to the collegiate level, joining the Calvin College men's and women's soccer programs as the goalkeeper coach. He later transitioned to the women's program alone and helped the Knights advance to the NCAA III Tournament quarterfinals in 2006, 2009 and 2015. A familiar face for many years of the Calvin home games was his father Henk who would patrol the far sidelines of the old Calvin soccer field, walking back and forth like his days as a military officer in the Dutch army.

A SHOULDER TO LEAN ON

His final season coaching was the 2015 campaign. It was a special one as he was matched with transfer goalkeeper Hollie (Ellerbroek) Honderd who had undergone three open heart surgeries to fix a heart defect. Honderd had spent two years on the Grand Valley State women's soccer program including its national championship team in 2012 but had hardly played due to her condition. In the fall of 2015, she transferred to Calvin for one more year of soccer while overcoming the physical and emotional weight of coming back from a severe physical challenge.

Her goalkeeper coach knew adversity. He had once stood shirtless as a young child under a blazing hot sun in a prison of war camp but found a way to make it through and see the light at the end of the tunnel.

"Coach TerHaar was more than just a coach that fall," said Honderd. "He was like a grandfather mentor as much as he was a coach. Without a doubt he helped me with my goalkeeping but more importantly he helped me with my perspective on life. There were times that I was tired, and my fitness wasn't where I wanted to be early in the season. He told me not to give up and playing soccer was an opportunity I would remember for the rest of my life. He was right."

Honderd went on to backstop a Calvin team that set a school record for victories in a season, finishing 21-2-3, winning MIAA regular season and MIAA Tournament titles along the way. The team advanced to the national quarterfinals of the NCAA III Tournament for the third time in school history. She received all-conference and all-region honors while recording 14 shutouts and a goals-against average of 0.76.

Now a physician's assistant with Corewell Health in Grand Rapids, married and the mother of two young boys, Honderd looks back on TerHaar's influence with fondness. "He's a special guy who is so positive about things," she says. "During my short time at Calvin, he was one of the key people who helped me get back on my feet."

In full retirement, TerHaar continues to show up at Calvin men's and women's soccer games. At the old Zuidema pitch, he would bring his lawn chair and sit near the team sidelines, opposite of the side his father once patrolled on his game day walks. The new Calvin Soccer Stadium brings new sight lines for TerHaar with state-of-the-art seating on the western end of the complex.  "The new stadium is wonderful," said TerHaar recently. "It is a tremendous resource for our men's and women's teams and I am looking forward to it as a fan too."

Calvin head women's soccer coach Emily Ottenhoff has seen TerHaar as a coach during her playing days from 2006-to-2009 and now as a fan as he continues to root on the Knights. "We loved having Casey as part of our coaching staff. He cared so much for our goalkeepers both challenging them and encouraging them," said Ottenhoff. "He also is quick to laugh and brought a joy to the entire group that is important as you navigate a long season. Now as the coach I appreciate Casey's continued interest and support of both the men's and women's programs here. He represents where these programs started. While we no longer have a spot for him to pull up his lawn chair down our sideline at old Zuidema field, I expect he is going to adjust to the new stadium with ease. He soon will have his 'spot' up in the bleachers where we'll be able to find him."

See what you see!