Dutch foundation donates piano to Black Butte School

Black Butte School students will enjoy their new piano for years to come. photo by Jim Mitchell Black Butte School has a new piano, thanks to a donation from a Dutch foundation with a local connection.

Eight years ago Shane Lundgren and Wendela van Beuningen met on the ski slopes in Austria. Three years ago Shane and Wendela married and a year ago moved from Holland to Camp Sherman.

Wendela's great-great-grandparents had 12 children. The twelfth was a girl they named Elise Mathilde.

Elise Mathilde left her money in a foundation named after her, with the intent to give money to a variety of projects, generally with an educational purpose, including children who are in need of special education and gifted or talented children.

The foundation has contributed to music, dance, and humanitarian projects throughout the world.

In talking with Black Butte School's teacher Toni Foster, van Beuningen found out that the school needed a new piano; the school's old piano had outlived its useful life.

Foster said, "It was at least 25 years old and it could have been as old as the present schoolhouse, built in 1951."

Van Beuningen's request was well received by the family foundation, which was impressed with the school and with the intended use of the piano.

Although none of the students play the piano, community members are interested in finding a music teacher.

Currently, an accompanist works with the students twice a week, practicing and planning for vocal performances at Christmas and at the end of the school year.

Wendela van Beuningen's nine- and 10-year-old girls, Julia and Elize van der Laan, attend Black Butte School, which has one teacher and 17 students.

Van Beuningen observed, "The nice thing about a piano is that it is lasting. One of the things the foundation wants to do is give something that is lasting, not money that will be spent with nothing left to show.

"Thirty or 40 years from now that piano will still be standing there."

She added, "I think it is very important for children that they grow up with music."

A brass nameplate on the piano acknowledges, "Donated by the Stichting Elise Mathilde Fonds Foundation of the van Beuningen family in the Netherlands 2004."

Elise Mathilde was the sister of Wendela's great-grandfather. The foundation is now being run by a group of uncles and cousins.

Van Beuningen's move from the Netherlands last year submerged her family in a new and different lifestyle. About Holland, she said, "There's no nature there. Here the children enjoy hiking and fishing."

She added, "I'm sure the days will come when the girls will want to go shopping and to the movies and nature will be second. They can't live out in the woods the rest of their lives, but for now, it's a great thing to offer them. And of course the school is excellent."

Before coming to America, her daughters had learned English only from talking with their stepfather. They are fluent now. And, according to Foster, the girls are now teaching the rest of the students European etiquette and eating style.

Van Beuningen fondly displayed a printed history of her family going back to the early 1800s. The book includes a photograph of Elise Mathilde. She said every four years the family plans a ski vacation, attended by up to 80 people. And family reunions still draw up to 300.

Black Butte School serves the Camp Sherman community with grade school through middle school curriculum.

Students from the school have won national honors for their work in history education competitions and the school is widely recognized for excellence in education.