Piet Wiebe Boonstra

It is with heavy heart that I share this news. Piet Wiebe Boonstra, 98 years old, departed this world to be with the Lord on March 27, 2024. Piet was born in the same house in Buchanan, NY, that he called home his entire life. Both of his parents were of Frisian descent, an ethnic group native to the North Sea coastal regions of Europe where his heritage can be traced back through more than eight generations of ships' carpenters, shopkeepers and peat farmers in Friesland, now a northwestern province of the Netherlands.

Piet is predeceased by his father Dirk Boonstra (1888-1932), his mother Petronella (Nellie) Dykstra Boonstra Smith (1896-1996), his brother Dirk Berend Boonstra who has been Missing in Action in the South Pacific since WWII, his wife Lillian Irene Tompkins Boonstra, his daughter Kathleen Boonstra Colligan Leary, his son John Leonard Boonstra, sister Nellie Boonstra Dykstra, his stepfather Elbert Parker Smith, four stepbrothers and a stepsister, of which Leonard, Arthur and Ralph were a loving part of our combined family.

Piet is survived by his daughter Donna Boonstra Martin (and husband Michael) of Prince George, VA, three sons - Thomas Dirk (and wife Karla) of Wallkill, James Pieter, and one sister Nancy Smith Casparian of Cornwall. He is also survived by ten grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and many beloved nieces and nephews.

A month after turning 17 and graduating from Hendrick Hudson High School in 1942, Piet joined the Navy where his three brothers were al-ready serving in World War II. Piet served as an ARM1C (Aviation Radioman) with active duty in Suriname (South America), Green Island (Papua, New Guinea), and Samar Island in the Philippines. After mustering out of the Navy in 1946, he worked odd jobs for a few years be-fore landing a job with the US Department of Defense supervising the aviation radio contingent of the 137th Fighter Interceptor Squadron based at Westchester County Airport, working with F-51H Mustang fighter-interceptors. In 1953, he voluntarily deployed into the US Air Force during the Cold War to serve as a Technical Sgt at Earnest Harmon AFB in Newfoundland for two years, accompanied by his wife and daughter Kathleen. During his deployment, he devised, designed and built a small mobile air traffic control tower for which he was awarded "Base NCO of the Month" by the division commander.

Piet was later employed for 25 years at IBM as a computer technician, testing and repairing supercomputers at the Poughkeepsie plant as they left the final assembly line, as well as occasionally fixing them in customers' offices with expediency for which he received special commendation. He later held management and technical staff positions at the Poughkeepsie plant and at various IBM headquarters locations in Westchester County that took him around the world as a Program Manager of New Products while serving as a technical assistant on the staffs of various manufacturing vice presidents. He returned to the Poughkeepsie plant in the late 1970s to manage the final assembly, test and timely shipment of the first System 370 Model 50 computers to customers, for which he received a special commendation and monetary award. After choosing to take early retirement from IBM in 1980, he worked part-time for 15 years as a computer macro programming specialist in the comptroller's office at the Wheelabrator Westchester Power Plant in Peekskill, NY.

In his spare time, Piet was a well-known, avid motorcyclist for 67 years and a life member of the American Motorcyclist Association for over 70 years. He and his wife Lillian eloped on his first motorcycle in 1948. He entered off-road endurance competition the same year, in which he won many regional and national championships during the next seven decades. At age 52, he turned his primary motorcycling interests to adventure touring and he explored more than a million miles of faraway places from Alaska and the Northwest Territories to the Yucatan Peninsula on all types of roads in all types of weather. He rode eight trips to Alaska using different routes, and also ventured deep into Copper Canyon in the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains of western Mexico alone on a huge touring motorcycle. On another solo trip to Mexico, he visited the Mayan ruins at Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen Itza and several other sites. He also took several long back-road tours of the US and Canada. He took his last solo cross-country motorcycle trip to Las Vegas, NV at age 86. Although he traveled mostly alone, he would often visit faraway places with his wife Lillian as a passenger, or he would travel in small groups with a few close friends.

Piet served as president of three different motorcycle clubs, his favorite of which was the RAMS MC of New England where he served for almost 30 years. He also served as president of the Croton Historical Society from 2001 until his death. He authored and self-published three books about his motorcycling, a biography of his brother Dirk, a brief autobiography, primarily for his family, and he co-authored two books about the history of Croton-on-Hudson, NY. He also maintained a large auto-biographical "blog" on the Internet about his motorcycling career, which contains many of his stories and thousands of photos.

There will be a celebration of life on Saturday, April 20th. In lieu of flowers, he asked that donations be send to: Hopewell Food Pantry, PO Box 1532, Hopewell, VA 23875.