Grace VanderWaal was only twelve and already a rock star. Everyone in America loves Grace VanderWaal with her initially super-simple act: a ukulele and a uniquely recognizable voice. When she won the eleventh season of America’s Got Talent, everyone was talking about her. She was a pre-pubescent, and that’s now eight years ago.
What her name suggests is correct. Her family hails from the banks of the Waal river. Numansdorp, Zwijdrecht, Goudriaan. In Goudriaan folks may say: hey, we’re not a river town. But that’s because they live exactly midway between the Lek and the Waal – in either case, it’s delta land, the mouth of Europe’s busiest river, the Rhine.
Last time they counted, ten years ago, 2,740 people by the name of Van der Waal lived in Holland. In the US there are 12. But condense the spelling, and Holland counts five VanderWaals, but America has about 500. This suggests that one day someone named Van der Waal crossed the Atlantic, and the name then quickly lost its spaces. That’s indeed what happened, his name was Arie van der Waal from Numansdorp. He brought Willemijn Reedijk from Strijen with him.
I Don’t Know My Name, was the title of the self-written song that Grace warmed Simon Cowell’s cold heart with. On the spot he predicted that she will become the new Taylor Swift, granddaughter of Gelderland’s oma Meulenkamp. Wouldn’t be too far-fetched, who knows, but I Don’t Know My Name? Grace is a descendant of one of Holland’s oldest families. To be sure, all of us have very old pedigrees, but in Grace’s case we know their names, mostly from preserved church records. Hers goes back to the year 1265, to Mels van Driel from Ridderkerk, and runs through families such as Terlouw, Brouwer, Korver, Kool, Vogelaar, Van Ommen, Akkerman, Ellerbroek, Fransen and Kermis, all the way down to her father David Vanderwaal from Kansas.
Van Driel, nothing wrong with that, way back eight centuries ago. They were hard workers and wealthy fat cats, an ideal combination in the Middle Ages when families were constantly battling river waters that were threatening their fields. Pietertje Kermis married a Van Driel, a rich merchant in oats, she bore him three children and became the great-grandmother, 21 generations removed, of the girl who so badly wanted a ukulele.
She asked one for her eleventh birthday. Mom said no. But Grace got birthday money from aunts and uncles, so she bought a ukulele herself. YouTube videos taught her how to play. A year later, in front of millions of TV viewers, she won her first prize.
