The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 42: A Standing Ovation

Episode Date: February 14, 2017

You can stand, but don't you dare applaud.

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This is the way I heard it. As fundraisers go, this one lacked the star power of a celebrity telethon, as well as the glamour of a Hollywood gala. For starters, there were no cameras, no red carpet, and no A-listers on hand. Just an unknown pianist and a 12-year-old aspiring ballerina named Eta. The venue was also modest, a makeshift stage in the study of Dr. Vooder's home in the little Dutch town of Velp. And the audience?

Just a few dozen wealthy patriots who had come to watch the recital. Of course, they weren't as wealthy as they had been six months earlier, but they were still patriots, and they still had a few guilders to spare for a worthy cause. And tonight, the cause was, indeed, a worthy one.

Edda took the tiny stage and smiled at the crowd. She composed herself and nodded to the pianist, who quietly tapped out a selection from Beethoven's creature of Prometheus. For these fundraisers, it was best to stick with Bach or Beethoven. Minkus and Mendelsohn were wonderful, but a pianist caught with sheet music by a Jewish composer would not be playing the piano for very long,

not in Velp, anyway, not in 1941. As always, the audience was enchanted. Edda moved with grace and beauty, completely inconsistent, with a skinny 12-year-old. No one cared that her costume had been fashioned from an old curtain or that she danced in someone else's worn out slippers. No one cared that, in her mind,

Eda was dancing a paw-de-do from Swan Lake at London's Albert Hall, quietly imagining the enthusiastic applause from a much larger audience. Edda relished these flights of fancy because when the music stopped, she knew she'd be back in occupied Holland, where there was nothing to eat but bread made from tulips and grass. The pianist hit his final chord. Edda struck her final pose and no one applauded.

She walked to the edge of the stage and took her bow in absolute silence. At the recitals where Edda danced, no one ever clapped for fear of drawing unwanted attention from the Nazis. Instead, they pantomimed their ovation, while smiling broadly and nodding with great enthusiasm. This soundless show of gratitude continued as a hat was passed around into which guilders were dropped, precious guilders used by the Dutch resistance to help repel the Nazi invaders. Of course, Nazis are notorious for resisting resistance, and over the next few years the cost of Dutch defiance would be steep.

Edda's brother would be arrested and sent to a labor camp. Her uncle Otto would wind up in a ditch with dozens of other innocent citizens shot dead by the Nazis. But nothing compared to the horror of the Hogan Vinter. In the winter of 1944, food and fuel supplies were cut, and young Edda had a front row seat to starvation on a mass scale. 20,000 civilians were systematically starved to death. Many children, many others, fron. rose. Edda survived, but she never forgot. By the time the Netherlands were liberated,

the 16-year-old dancer weighed less than 90 pounds. The Hogan Vinter had left Edda malnourished, anemic, jaundiced, asthmatic, and profoundly weakened. Her dreams of becoming a prima ballerina would never become a reality. But her dream of standing before an audience that could express its appreciation without reservation, that was still very much alive, as was a new desire to save the world's children from the horrors of hunger, or at least try. In the years that followed, Edda's quest took her all over the world on a kind of perpetual fundraising tour that generated more guilders than anyone thought possible. Along the way, she found her way onto a number of stages, each a bit more elaborate than the makeshift platform in Dr. Vooder's study.

Eventually, Edda found the audience she'd always dreamed of reaching, an audience that could express its gratitude without fear or reservation, an audience that did so, time and time and time again. Edda Van Hempstra only lived to be 63, but when she died in Switzerland in 1993, in 1993, There wasn't much left on her to-do list. There was an Oscar on the mantle, along with an Emmy, and a Tony, and a Grammy. There was also an iconic little black dress from what many still call her greatest performance of all time, but those closest to her knew that nothing could compare with the Presidential Medal of Freedom,

awarded to her by President George H.W. Bush for her tireless work as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Not bad for the skinny kid from Belgium, who was never properly applauded for fighting the Nazis, but brought the whole world to its feet by being the one and only. Audrey Hepburn. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. If you work in university maintenance, Granger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Granger is your trusted partner. Offering the products you need all in one place, from HVAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more.

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