Marijke Elbo and her husband Henrik have been married for 41 years and moved to Sequim more than 20 years ago from Los Angeles.

She worked 18 years with Universal Studios and finished as manager of the international television distribution department.

She began working for Universal in 1967 before the popular studio tour was built. She met plenty of actors and actresses and even Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly, and her three children.

Elbo recalls that in the beginning she and other employees had to walk through a dirt parking lot and directors/producers/actors bungalows to get to offices. One day a group of movie set sheep wandered onto her path.

“They were happily munching there,” she said. “They wouldn’t move no matter what we did. We were late clocking in and our bosses were dubious of this excuse… It was a funny story that made the rounds at the studio.”

But Elbo’s connection to Hollywood began with her mother Lomida “Mama Lou” Vysma an employee and later an attorney for different movie studios including RKO Radio Pictures in Amsterdam who distributed Disney movies through the mid-1950s. She became acquaintances with Walt and Roy Disney upon their visits, which led to Elbo and her family eventually landing in Los Angeles.

❝In 1953 Holland was victim to tremendous floods. A large flood punched a hole in the North Sea dike that protects Holland and flooded half of the southern part. America opened up its doors for people to immigrate to the United States without going through many of the strict requirements that would normally be required for immigration.

Dutch people are stubborn and many, many people took advantage of it but many did not because they’d rather stay and save their farms and so on.

So whatever the immigration quota was wasn’t even half filled and mom had never really liked being in Holland because of the cold weather. We lived in Amsterdam which is in the northern part so we weren’t direct flood victims but we could take advantage of this quota.

In those days, it was customary that you immigrated and go someplace on the east coast and at that point told where you would end up.

Mom said she didn’t want to go the east coast where it is cold and damp too but instead to the west coast where it’s sunny and warm and she felt she’d find better employment there.

She contacted the Disney brothers and asked them if there anything they can do to help us get on the West Coast.

They were more than happy to help us and an executive secretary set us up with the Los Feliz Methodist Church who gave us a house to live in.

My parents only had $20 in their pockets and my mom went to work for Columbia Studios and my dad was a gas attendant. She went to school and eventually became a lawyer and worked for Columbia, Universal and finished her career in private practice. She passed away in January.❞

Elbo was 14 when she came to America. She and her mother were born in Indonesia but immigrated to Holland because her mother felt it was unsafe due to social unrest.

Elbo said coming to American schools was an easy transition.

“I had four years of English before coming here. Plus, English always came easy to me while I was learning French and German,” she said.

“The funny part is that I was in my third part of high school in Holland and we got my transcript from my school and our sponsor (in America) said I should be in junior high school because of my age.

At the school, the principal said I should be in ninth grade because of my age but I should be in college because of the classes I took.

For two or three years I soared through school but I’m glad I did. It would have been tough to go to college as a 14 year with 18 year olds.”

Everyone has a story and now they have a place to tell it. Verbatim is a first-person column that introduces you to your neighbors as they relate in their own words some of the difficult, humorous, moving or just plain fun moments in their lives. It’s all part of the Gazette’s commitment as your community newspaper. If you have a story for Verbatim, contact editor Michael Dashiell at editor@sequimgazette.com.