Cornelius Christian Vanderstar

February 19, 1915 - November 22, 2014 "Van" Vanderstar passed away peacefully at the age of 99 at his home in Newport Beach. Van was born in Rotterdam, Holland in 1915 and moved with his family to Batavia, Dutch East Indies in 1920. He attended school there until the age of 17 when he left on a 90 foot sailing ship that was cruising the Pacific. He became captain of the ship at age 18 and continued sailing for two more years before returning to Java where he worked at various jobs. Shortly after the Japanese invaded in early 1942, he surreptitiously repaired and outfitted an old 25 foot sailboat and one dark night sailed out of Batavia (Now Jakarta, Indonesia) Harbor with two non-sailing companions. They sailed 2,500 miles across the Indian Ocean to Rodriquez Island off the east coast of Africa which was held at the time by the British. He later wound up in Darwin, Australia where he was an officer in the Dutch Navy running PT boats on espionage missions into Japanese held islands. After World War II he immigrated to the United States, became a US citizen, and married Marguerite Hill in 1954. Van worked in sales for Alcan and Kaiser Aluminum and in 1957 started his own aluminum building products business in Los Angeles. In 1962 he took the name International Aluminum Corporation for his fast growing operations in both the US and Europe. IAC became a public company in 1968. In 1972 it was listed on the American Stock Exchange and in 1978 went on the New York Stock Exchange where it remained until it was sold in 2007. Van is survived by his step-daughter and step-son in Australia and had no children of his own that he knew of. His wife Marguerite passed away in 2011 at the age of 102. At his request there will be no services.