Gerard and Willy Verkaik
Gerard and Willy Verkaik love open space.
And while their children want the couple living close to family, the Verkaiks consider close a relative term. They recently bought a 40-acre property north of Loon Lake off Highway 395. The land is about 30 minutes from their daughter’s Colbert home.
“We like to be way out, on a place we can call our own,” says Gerard, 78. “We don’t want to be too close to civilization.”
Willy, 79, shares her husband’s longing for solitude. “I don’t like the city,” she says. “It’s so busy with so many cars.
“I like to be out where it’s not so busy.”
Last December, the Verkaiks moved to the Inland Northwest from Canon City, Colo., where they owned a 500-acre ranch. Gerard kept cattle as a hobby.
“We lived alone on top of a mountain, which was wonderful,” Willy says.
During their 54 years of marriage, the Verkaiks have moved across the Atlantic Ocean and crisscrossed North America.
In 1953, the young couple immigrated to Canada after spending their teenage years in occupied Holland. A few years later, Gerard, an engineer, went to work for Boeing in Seattle. From there, the family moved to Baton Rouge, La., and later, Huntsville, Ala., while Gerard worked on NASA contracts, including one to design the lunar rover.
The couple lived outside New Orleans until 1980, when they “got tired of the heat and humidity, cockroaches and mosquitoes” and moved to Colorado, where they built a home at 9,400 feet, Gerard says.
Why Spokane?
“We were getting of the age where it would be too hard if anything happened,” says Willy of living in Colorado, far from her four children. “No one could really be there.”
They also like the Inland Northwest’s four seasons and scenery. “I like the country here. I love the mountains and the climate,” Gerard says. “I love the green, the lakes, the rivers.”
Real estate
The couple is renting a home in Colbert while waiting to break ground later this month on their three-bedroom home in Stevens County. The new place has lots of windows, Willy says. “The view is so beautiful.”
Developing the hilltop property required building a one-mile road with “many switchbacks,” Gerard says. “It has a fantastic view and a nice deck to look at the view.”
Settling in
While they love opera and live theater, the couple say they haven’t had time to experience Spokane’s cultural nightlife. “We’ve been very, very busy working on the house,” Gerard says.
Gerard, who owns an engineering and architectural firm, continues to work part-time.
“What will I do if I retire? Watch soapies with my wife all day?” he says with a laugh.
“I do not watch soapies all day,” Willy says later, gently teasing her husband. “I only watch one, ‘Days of Our Lives,’ since 1965.
“He wouldn’t eat at night if I watched soaps all day.”