Former WMU exchange student makes return visit

Karin Arkema-Ekster and her husband Jan Martin recently spent an afternoon touring Winfield and visiting with some friends from the past.

A native of the Netherlands, Karin was the WMU foreign exchange student for the 1983-84 school year. Don and Linda Westercamp and their children, Dirk and Holly, were her host family.

While in Winfield, Karin and Sandy (Jennings) Hammond became close friends and have remained in touch through the years.

Until the COVID pandemic, Sandy and her husband Doug exchanged visits with Karin and her family every five years. They plan to continue that tradition.

This year Karin and Jan Martin met Sandy and Doug, and their nephew Chet Anderson, in Plymouth, Wisconsin.

Sandy and Doug were attending a Mustang event at Road America and showed Karin and Jan Martin around the track grounds. Karin got to ride with Doug for a few laps of the track.

After a day and a half of catching up with Sandy and Doug, Karin and Jan Martin began their trip down the Mississippi’s Great River Road, stopping in Pepin, Wisconsin and Burr Oak, Iowa, to see some places Laura Ingalls Wilder lived.

Then they were on to Dubuque to tour the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium. After a stop in Muscatine to see the National Pearl Button Museum and the Muscatine County Environmental Learning Center, they were on to Winfield.

Their first stop in Winfield was at the home of Larry and Sharon Jennings. They, along with Ron Cutkomp and Scott Jennings, ate lunch at El Mariachi, located in the building that housed the Peppermint Parlor when Karin was an exchange student.

Following lunch, they surprised former classmate Fred Gerling with a visit to his shop. Next, they were given a tour of the school by Brooke McArtor, who had also arranged a visit to the former Westercamp house.

From the school it was on to the Winfield Historical Museum where Judy Rawson gave them a tour of both the current museum and the site of the future museum. They also stopped at Dr. Norm Hansmeyer’s vet clinic and enjoyed seeing Don Westercamp’s former workplace and his photo that hangs there.

After a stop at the former Westercamp home where they were greeted by owner Michelle Niebuhr, it was back to the Jennings for a short visit before they continued their travels.

In addition to all the visiting, Karin and Jan Martin took photos and collected some material to put in a video to surprise another former foreign exchange student, Anne Marie Herlaar. She stayed with the Trees family in 1981-82.

Karin said everything remained pretty much as she remembered, and the visit brought back many memories of the time she spent here.

She expressed her love for Winfield and its people, saying she feels very much at home here. Her one disappointment was noticing that the photos of all the exchange students that were once lined up on a school wall had been removed and no one seems to know where they have gone.

Karin currently teaches English at what would be a community college here and Jan Martin just retired from his job as an elementary school teacher.

They are spending Karin’s Spring Break traveling down the Great River Road and will return home May 11. They have two grown daughters, Elianne and Esther, who both live and work in the Netherlands.