In 1981, Barry Van Gurp went to the corner store for a plant to put on the balcony of his family’s apartment in Prüm, Germany, where he was stationed with the U.S. Air Force. He came home with four orange and red marigolds.
Forty-three years later, he’s still growing their descendants at his home in Glenburn and has shared seeds with more than 100 fellow veterans.
He’s always liked to grow things, and it’s a good way to keep busy in retirement. The red petals set the marigolds apart from common American varieties.
But to Van Gurp, caring for plants is also a way to memorialize people. By raising and distributing these flowers, he wants to keep alive the history and human costs of a momentous World War II battle that took place in the city where they came from.
The steep death tolls on both sides, and the conflict’s effects still visible in Prüm three decades later, would stay with Van Gurp for the rest of his life. And the marigolds would give him a living memorial.
“These plants, even after all the years I’ve grown them, have displayed a strength that keeps me continuing,” he said.
Prüm, where he was stationed for three years, lay in the path of the Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s last major offensive on the Western Front in 1944-45. It was America’s deadliest battle in the conflict. More than 75,000 U.S. soldiers and more than 100,000 Germans died as a result. Most of the city was destroyed by bombing during the war.
Residents rebuilt, but reminders lingered.
Air Force members were warned not to go into the woods behind their base, where bunkers and munitions remained. Concrete pyramids called “dragon’s teeth,” designed to stop oncoming tanks, lined the landscape. Some nights, they heard explosions from animals walking over landmines. Local children occasionally discovered live grenades.
“It was not one that should have happened, but the powers that be during those times are what made this all happen,” he wrote in a brochure distributed with the seeds. “I hope today’s people can learn from the past.”
In Germany and other military assignments across the world, Van Gurp specialized in phone and computer maintenance, working his way up to Master Sergeant. The family returned to the United States and spent 11 years at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone before Van Gurp and his late wife settled in Glenburn.
Today, his yard is populated with 30 pots of marigolds, decorated with American flags and lit by more than 300 solar lights. One year, he made a sign for each pot with the names of his family members who had served in the military.
At the end of the season Van Gurp removes the flower heads, spreads them on a tarp across a two-by-four on the garage floor, waits for them to dry and separates out the seeds to plant next year. In April, he’ll start the seeds indoors, beginning the cycle again.
“I enjoy them,” he said. “It gives me something to do, and it’s better than watching TV all day.”
At home, he also tends a hoya plant received from a coworker four decades ago, several jade plants that are at least 20 years old and an English ivy gifted by his mother in the 1990s. He’s named the offspring of a long-lived spider plant after family members. The hoya is called Athena, like the coworker who gave it to him.
Local friends, acquaintances and coworkers have received seeds and houseplant cuttings too. Employees at his local post office know the packages well, he said, and he advises them that free marigold seeds can be had by collecting the flowers in fall.
“As one would say, plant forward,” he writes in his brochure. “Share the wealth.”
Van Gurp has enough seed packets to share with 10 Bangor Daily News readers and can be reached at [email protected].
