Bastiaan Boll

Bastiaan Boll, 92, of Sun City Hilton Head passed away on Saturday 8 October 2011. Bob, as he was known to his friends, was born in 1919 to Dutch parents on the island of Borneo in Indonesia. Bob and his four brothers grew up in Indonesia until he was 7 years old. He then went to boarding school in Holland, where, among other things he would carry with him throughout his life, he learned to speak German, French and English.He completed intensive studies at the Maritime College in Amsterdam to become a flyer in the Royal Netherlands Air Force. Shortly after his apprenticeship aboard the Royal Netherlands Steamship Company's SS Oberon, World War II broke out in 1940. During the war, Bob served as a merchant marine officer and sailed everywhere from South America to the United States; he eventually climbed the ranks to become a third officer.Once his military service was completed, he continued to stay at sea, or very close to it as he was a mariner at heart; he worked in South America for United Fruit Company in the 1950's and with the Holland America Line in the 1960s and 1970s. He met his wife Zoila while working on the Gulf Coast of Mexico in the early 1960s. By then, he