In memory of Nicholas van Laer
Obituary

 

Nicholas van Laer died peacefully at home of natural causes on June 6, 2014.

 

Born in 1928 in Arnhem, Holland of parents Johnnas Adriaan van Laer and Betsy Marcella Veder van Laer, he came to America with his parents when he was 4 years old.  He was educated in the US school system and lived in Yonkers, NY.  Mr. van Laer received his Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from St. Lawrence University in Canton NY. Following graduation he joined the US Navy and entered OCS in Newport, RI. After receiving his commission he served in the Amphibious Fleet during the Korean War.

 

 

Subsequent to his Navy tour, he spent 5 years in advertising,  including time as an account executive with the J. Walter Thompson Company. He then joined the Colgate Palmolive Company as a product manager. During this period, he was the creative genius who conceived of and introduced Colgate-Palmolive's iconic product, green Palmolive dishwashing liquid, which went on to become one of the world's most famous and bestselling dishwashing liquids, a distinction it still enjoys to this day.

 

 

In 1962, he was transferred to Colgate’s German subsidiary in Hamburg, where he spent most of his career as the General Manager. While in Hamburg, he served as vice president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany. He served 9 years as a vestry member and as Chaplin’s Warden for the Anglican Church of  St. Thomas A’ Becket, where he was also a Lay Eucharistic Minister.

 

After returning to the US he became the International Director of Colgate Palmolive’s world wide toothpaste business. Following his retirement he was a long time resident of Southern Shores. He served 15 years as a volunteer with the Outer Banks Chapter of the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), serving two terms as Chairman. He was a founding member of All Saints Episcopal Church of Southern Shores. His favorite pastime during his retirement years was maintaining hives as a beekeeper.  He was a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees.

 

Nick is survived by his wife Helen Louise, née Ruark, formerly of Baltimore, MD. They rejoiced in nearly 62 years of marriage.  He is also survived by his brother Jan and his family, his son Lee Edward van Laer, his son-in-law Harry Hansen, his sister-in-law Patricia Obert and her family, and 4 grand children, Adriaan and Rebecca van Laer and Nicholas and Thomas Hansen. Many cousins in Holland also survive. His daughter, Sarah Hansen, predeceased him.

 

A memorial service is planned at All Saints Episcopal Church, Pintail Trail, Southern Shores NC, for Monday, June 9, at 2 p.m.

 

A reception will be held at the church immediately after the service.  Interment will take placement at a later date.

 

Memorial gifts may be made to All Saints Episcopal Church or to Feline Hope.

 

 

Eulogy

 

Heaven Knows

How exact the skill of dying is;
It has no parallel,
And its exact circumference,
No woman born can tell. The art
Of giving birth is safely known,
Yet dying is a seed who's only sown;
No contemplation penetrates the life that grows
From soul's deep eye, which only
Heaven knows.

Death is a kind of inner and outer work that can only be appreciated through experience. Being at my father's bedside reminded me quite exactly of attending the birth of my children; and I hesitate to embroider either event with hyperbole. Neither is brutish or elevated; they are simple facts to be appreciated, each of which brings a depth of experience to respect and even cherish, since without them we cannot possibly begin to know what this life is.

At both birth and death, I realize I cannot know what life is except through the living of it, which is, the ancient sages and masters recognized, the one absolute. I can only know Being itself; all else, I graft onto it as an accessory. Yet it's always the grafts I treasure, thinking that blossoms and fruits alone give justice to the vine. 

The vine is where all the strength lies; the rest is sweet but temporary. In death, as in birth, for a moment, we see that vine, and appreciate it.

My father's struggle, of course, made a great impression; but so too did the enormous compassion and support of all the souls that gathered around him as he died. 

At our best, we humans have capacities for love so great that even angels look on in envy; why, then, do they so often fail us? It is a mystery. Perhaps it's our mortality itself that lights this fire in us, and nothing else will do; if so, death's well met, since it produces so much wonder.

 

—Lee van Laer

Nick with wife Helen and his father Jan van Laer senior, circa 1951