Why Competition Works

Warren Kozak:

Peter Boscha is a tall, handsome man with a friendly bearing and a youthful charm despite the fact that he is almost 80. As he welcomes you into his home, on the outskirts of Racine, it is immediately evident from his accent that he didn't start here. Peter Boscha was born in the small hamlet of Friesland, Holland, in 1932. His father worked on a nearby farm like most of the men in that northern part of the Netherlands. There were few extras in Peter's early life, but Peter was born with a desire to succeed. The family had enough to eat when he was growing up and their house was one of the first to have electricity, which by today's standards does not sound terribly noteworthy, but in rural Holland in 1938, electricity was a great luxury.

That luxury along with everything else in Peter's life changed dramatically on the morning of May 10, 1940. "I remember the Messerschmitts flying low over our street." Germany had invaded Holland. Actually, rolled over it is more precise. The Dutch Army was no match for the power of the Third Reich - Holland was merely a way to get to the bigger prizes of Europe - France and England.

"At first, life under the Germans seemed fairly normal," Peter remembers. "But soon, the grip began to tighten and we saw new laws put in place." It started with relatively minor decrees and then grew much worse.

Peter's formal education ended in 1943. "The Germans took over our school and they just kicked us out." For obvious reasons, this is something that has always stayed with him. "I never went past the sixth grade."

From the age of 12 on, he worked on the farm, mostly tending tulip bulbs. But throughout the dark days of the war, indeed from his earliest memories, there was one goal that always beckoned - the United States. That may seem odd in this relatively homogenous and isolated part of Holland - that a country thousands of miles away would capture a young boy's imagination as well as his heart. But as for Peter, as for millions of people around the world, there was something special about America.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 8, 2011 1:05 AM
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