Paul Van Zyverden, a Meridian business leader known for his family’s floral distribution company, died Monday at the age of 85 at the Anderson Regional Medical Center.

Mr. Van Zyverden brought Van Zyverden, Inc. to Meridian and helped grow a family flower bulb distributor into an international business with a headquarters in Meridian.

Obituary

To read Mr. Van Zyverden’s obituary, click here.

Born in 1932 in Haarlem, Holland, Mr. Van Zyverden and his brother started making sales trips to the United States and Canada in his teens, making calls and finding new customers.

By the late 1950s, Mr. Van Zyverden’s older brother, Dirk, asked him to travel to the Southeast United States and find new opportunities for expansion. 

“That’s how he first came to the South,” Robert Van Zyverden, Paul Van Zyverden’s son, said. “Meridian was one of the many towns that he had customers in.”

According to Robert Van Zyverden, his father traveled from Savannah to Dallas for years before a customer in Meridian suggested he lease a second-story loft as a local base of operations.

That loft, at 2118 Front St., had a freight elevator and, more importantly, allowed Mr. Van Zyverden to open a warehouse in Meridian in 1961.

“That’s how he began his business in Meridian,” Robert Van Zyverden said. 

A 1990 business profile in Mississippi Magic, a scan of which was submitted to The Meridian Star by the family, said the bulbs weighed so much the floor started to sag within two years of operation, prompting a move to a warehouse in 1996.

In this profile, Mr. Van Zyverden wrote about his reasons for staying in Meridian.

“Meridian is a good, central location for shipping,” he wrote. “We are right in between Dallas and Atlanta. We’re only nine-hundred miles from Chicago. Once we came here, it just seemed an ideal place to settle down and rear a family. Memphis would have been a good location for us too, but we just liked Meridian. Plus, the people employed by us have been exceptional. They are hard workers.”

Mr. Van Zyverden married Els van de Graaff in 1963 and had two children: Jacqueline in 1968 and Robert in 1970, while the business, which became two separate businesses under brothers Paul and Dirk, continued to grow and expand.

Mr. Van Zyverden’s four grandchildren called him opa, or grandfather in Dutch. Jacqueline Van Zyverden Hogan’s daughter, Mr. Van Zyverden’s granddaughter, Chandler Hogan, remembered his enthusiasm for spontaneity and “train chasing.”

“He was all about trains. When we were younger, he took a group of my friends and followed trains on the highways,” Chandler Hogan said. “We once ended up two hours away from Meridian!”

Chandler Hogan, 14, also remembered how her opa made Dutch pancakes on birthdays. When Mr. Van Zyverden turned 80, the family planned a big party and got an unexpected surprise.

Because of Mr. Van Zyverden’s love for fireworks, the family purchased a trailer of fireworks for a show. Unfortunately, one misfired after the party and exploded on the ground, shaking the house.

“But he loved fireworks,” Chandler Hogan said, laughing.

A lover of Waffle House, Hogan remembered her father as someone better with business than his hands, noting that they used his iPhone only to keep tabs on his location through the phone’s GPS and he only learned to drive a riding lawn mower a few years ago. 

“One day, he was mowing and he tells my husband (Tim), ‘I’m not sure what it is but it sure is rough today!’ and my husband takes a look and said, ‘Well, Paul, you’ve got a flat over here!’ He’d been driving on a flat all day,” Hogan said. 

Both children remembered their father as a businessman who ensured they’d have the opportunity to follow his footsteps in the company if they wanted. And while, in his obituary, they list his only hobbies as work and playing cards, Hogan said Mr. Van Zyverden also loved to donate to community causes.

“He was very generous,” Hogan said. “He gave to committees and would fundraise for various organizations but when he was working, he was working.”

Throughout their childhood, Jacqueline and Robert Van Zyverden remembered their father saying he’d never move back to Holland, only to break his promise as he neared his retirement in 1996. 

After purchasing an apartment in Holland in 1993, he split his time between Holland, south Florida and Meridian, traveling extensively, buying boats and enjoying the retired life, according to his children.

“He enjoyed being in Florida,” Robert Van Zyverden said. 

Despite his ties to Holland, his children said Mr. Van Zyverden loved the United States and the American way, tearing up whenever he heard the national anthem. 

“He always said that he never would have been able to do what he did anywhere else,” Robert Van Zyverden said. “And Meridian gave him a lot of the success he had. He said that a lot over the years.”

“He attributed his success to the people of Meridian,” Hogan said. 

Services for Mr. Van Zyverden are scheduled at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Burial will be at the Magnolia Cemetery. Visitation will be held Friday, Sept. 22 from 5-7 p.m. at Robert Barham Family Funeral Home.