SR0811 102ND GENERAL ASSEMBLY

SR0811 LRB102 26083 LAW 35550 r

SENATE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened to learn of the death of retired Professor Adriaan Jan de Witte of Urbana, who passed away on January 19, 2022; and

WHEREAS, Professor de Witte was born to Leendert and Elizabeth de Witte in Bergen op Zoom, the Province of Brabant, Netherlands on January 16, 1924; as a young student, he was required to declare allegiance to Hitler's Reich during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II; he refused, choosing instead to flee the Nazi regime to join Dutch pacifist war resisters in the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain; he was captured by the Gestapo while attempting to exit Vichy France and imprisoned in a French provincial jail before being shipped by railway to work in a German concentration camp; he escaped and traversed eastern Europe on foot to the coast of France; he was transported by boat to England, where he joined Dutch volunteers in the British Army and served as a medic for the rest of the war; and

WHEREAS, Professor de Witte received honors in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands in 1946; he earned his master's degrees in both Mathematics and Physics from the University of Leiden in 1948; he married Maria E. Boom on November 11, 1948; and

WHEREAS, Professor de Witte first embarked for work in the oil business to Indonesia; while he was fascinated by the natural world of the tropics, he was repulsed by the human misery and conditions of colonial rule; alongside his wife and daughter Bette, he emigrated to the United States in 1951; he then held a series of research scientist roles, working at Shell Oil in Houston, Texas in 1951, Conoco Oil in Ponca City, Oklahoma from 1952 to 1955, and at the headquarters of Gulf Oil in Harmarville, Pennsylvania from 1955 to 1960; he left the corporate oil industry in pursuit of academic freedom; and

WHEREAS, Professor de Witte became a full professor in the Department of Mining, Metallurgy & Petroleum Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) when he was 36 years old; he taught UIUC's first class on world mineral economics; he also spent five successive summers as a visiting scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Falmouth, Massachusetts; he retired in 1987; and

WHEREAS, Professor de Witte was a keen learner and a free thinker; he was raised in the Calvinist tradition; he was fluent in many languages, including English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, and Latin, with a passing familiarity of Greek and Gaelic; he loved American idioms; he was an avid classical music listener and an arts aficionado; he was a lifelong birdwatcher, and he participated in the Audubon Society's annual bird count and camped in Allerton Park to count owls; and

WHEREAS, Above all, Professor de Witte was an activist; he supported the civil rights movement in the early 1960s and held a weekly silent vigil against the Vietnam War along with a handful of fellow protestors in front of the Alma Mater statue on the UIUC campus as early as 1965; he remained adamantly opposed to all future wars and was a pacifist his entire life; and

WHEREAS, After retirement, Professor de Witte spent many summers with family in Nova Scotia, where he passionately photographed the "green flash" over the ocean at sunset; he was a naturalist and soon became a preservationist, purchasing 25 acres of woodlands in Cape Breton and deeding them to be kept forested in perpetuity; he acquired a 150-year-old Cape Cod-style cottage and had it designated a Provincial Heritage Property, outfitting it exclusively with antiques mostly from central Illinois; he also collected and fixed antique clocks; and

WHEREAS, Professor de Witte was affectionately known as "Papa" to his children and "Opa" to his grandchildren; and

WHEREAS, Professor de Witte was preceded in death by his wife of 70 years, Maria; his parents; his sister, Janny Roest; and his brothers, Rinus and Leendert de Witte; and

WHEREAS, Professor de Witte is survived by his children, Bette Leach (Bob), Maarten (Jill), and Beverly Ann Fraser-de Witte; his grandsons, Jesse Fraser (Lindsay McDonald), Seth Fraser (Erin McKenzie), and Skylar Denny de Witte; and his great-grandchildren, Ewan McDonald-Fraser, William McDonald-Fraser, and Thoreau McKenzie-Fraser; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE ONE HUNDRED SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn the passing of retired Professor Adriaan Jan de Witte and extend our sincere condolences to his family, friends, and all who knew and loved him; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the family of Professor de Witte as an expression of our deepest sympathy.