It was a classic post-war love story.
In memory of his late wife Trudy, Hermann Standfest has donated $100,000 to the South Okanagan Similkameen (SOS) Medical Foundation and its Penticton Regional Hospital fundraising campaign.
The Penticton couple’s story really started more than 70 years ago when Germany surrendered to the Allies in May 1945. Hermann, a 22-year-old German soldier, found himself trapped behind Russian lines in Czechoslovakia. Getting back to his home in western Bohemia was not going to be easy.
“I packed my rucksack and travelled only at night. I ended up in the American zone (of occupied Germany) in August,” he recalled.
Three years later, in May 1948, he moved to Heidelberg and met Trudy, the girl of his dreams. They got married that December and would remain together for 67 years.
By 1951, they decided to emigrate to Canada. Hermann went first, while Trudy remained in Heidelberg where she worked for the Deutsche Bank.
Speaking little English, he arrived in Vancouver and managed to get a job at the Bralorne gold mine west of Lillooet. The first money he earned went towards bringing his wife to Canada so they could be reunited.
“I told Trudy, ‘It doesn’t matter – we will make it.’ And we made it,” he said.
The couple moved to Vancouver in 1955 and Hermann later gained employment as a carpenter working on construction of the Second Narrows Bridge. One day the scaffolding he was working on collapsed, and he fell 40 feet to the ground. Somehow, he landed on his feet and broke both his ankles, but narrowly avoided serious back and neck injuries.
They considered a move to Whistler but opted for life in the Okanagan instead, purchasing a 14-acre orchard in Penticton in 1966.
“We thought we could work the orchard ourselves. We didn’t need any help,” he said.
After working the farm themselves for a number of years, they eventually opted to lease the orchard to another grower. Trudy and Hermann continued to live on the property until 1993 when they moved into a new home on Sutherland Road. Both avid skiers, they also bought a cabin at Apex in 1995 and were avid travellers in their fifth wheel trailer.
However, Trudy suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease over the past 10 years and died on January 26, 2016 at the Westview Extended Care residence next to PRH.
“She was everything I dreamed of in a marriage. She was everything to me,” he said.
Hermann added not only is the donation in memory of Trudy, but also a way of saying thank-you to Canada for a great life in their adopted country.
“I said to Trudy: ‘We are blessed that we can live here,’” he recalled. “Canada looked after us better than our homeland.”
The SOS Medical Foundation is raising $20 million to provide the medical equipment for the new Patient Care Tower at PRH. Construction will start this spring.