Published: May 16, 2008 02:39 pm      

Hendrik van Oss speaks at Vanoss

Vanoss — A chance business trip to Holcim Cement plant in Ada provided Hendrik G. van Oss of Reston, Va., an opportunity for which he had been waiting.

Vanoss School was named for members of his family and the geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey minerals information team welcomed the opportunity to pay a personal visit to Vanoss School.

Although the van Oss family never lived in Oklahoma their ties to the Vanoss community are well established.

Through genealogical research on the van Oss family Hendrik G. van Oss is well-acquainted with his family’s connection to Vanoss, Okla.

“I knew about Vanoss and its history,” he said during a presentation to Vanoss School students and staff Thursday.

Vanoss is often referred to as “the school without a town.” However, that wasn’t always the case. It was once a thriving railroad town.

In 1904, S.F. van Oss, a Dutch banker and his brother, Alexander, financed the construction of a railroad that would run from Lehigh to Chickasha.

The railroad, later named Oklahoma Central Railroad (OCRR), was completed in 1908 but was bankrupt that same year. “The brothers lost much of their money in this deal,” said van Oss.

OCRR’s path missed the already established town of Midland by a few miles, so the residents picked up and moved to the railroad tracks.

Midland then changed its name to Vanoss in honor of S.F. van Oss.

Railroads were not the only financial ventures in which S.F. van Oss became involved. He became a student of the stock market in London at the age of 20 and by age 23 was a millionaire. He invested wisely in oil pools near Glenpool, Okla., and pipelines that eventually became Texaco.

In 1914, van Oss founded a weekly newspaper that became well-known in the Netherlands before World War II.

When Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940, S.F. van Oss and his brother Alexander escaped the gas chambers.

“They had married women who were not Jewish,” said Hendrik van Oss.

However, S.F. and Alexander’s four sisters were not so lucky. They died in gas chambers at Auschwitz and Sobibor.

S.F. van Oss died in 1949 and Alexander in 1966.