My Heritage: Paul van der Salm

Dutch by Blood, American by Birth, and an Admitted Nerd

I come from a family of Dutch bulb farmers but the farming gene skipped my generation. I can’t grow anything very well and I joke that I don’t have any green thumbs.

Instead, I help people grow their businesses as a relationship banking officer based at Heritage Bank’s Vancouver, Washington, office. I also work throughout the Portland metropolitan area.

My parents emigrated to Woodland, Washington, from Holland in 1980 to start a bulb farm, which still exists today. I had a great upbringing there. Field trips from my school often visited the van der Salm Bulb Farm (literally “field” trips) to learn what it takes to grow all the beautiful color that emerges from lilies, tulips, hostas, dahlias, peonies, irises and more. The farm primarily sells bulbs wholesale but it also sells peony roots and grows lilies commercially.

I remember during the massive floods of February 1996, when the East Fork of the Lewis River abutting our fields flooded about half our farm. I joke that I should have stuck my finger in the dam because our dike broke. I remember asking my parents if I could swim in our field afterward but was denied.

What they didn’t deny me, however, was appreciation for our Dutch heritage, taking us kids to Holland each year to visit family. Little did I recognize then how fortunate I was to travel internationally.

While my parents, Jerry and Tonny, are retired, the farm operates today as Our American Roots under my brother, sister-in-law, sister and “pseudo brother,” who came to the farm 27 years ago as a Dutch foreign exchange student to learn bulb farming, got his horticulture degree, then returned as an employee and later became part owner.

The bulb fields on the van der Salm family farm.

Paul van der Salm

While I don’t farm, my wife and I still attend family dinner at my parents’ house every Monday that typically includes about 13 to 15 family members, with my four siblings (not counting my pseudo brother) and nieces and nephews. My extended Dutch Catholic family is large, with my dad hailing from a family of eight and my mom from a family of nine, which means many aunts, uncles and cousins. (The archbishop would consider me Paulus, the name I use on my Facebook page, but I go by Paul.)

Paul and his wife, Brittany, at Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan.

Paul van der Salm

Our family enjoys Dutch traditions, including celebrating Sinterklaas, essentially Dutch Christmas, each year. It celebrates the legend of St. Nick, who, among other things, told girls needing dowry for marriage to leave their shoes by the fire, in which he’d leave money after slipping into their homes at night. Instead of celebrating Sinterklaas by leaving our shoes out, we draw family names from a hat and then present that person with a gift and poem that playfully mocks them over events of the past year.

While my siblings and I grew up bilingual, speaking Dutch and English, we’ve generally resorted to English-only to avoid alienating our significant others. My Dutch is passable when I visit Holland but it’s not perfect.

The language of soccer, though, runs thick in my blood. Soccer is huge in the Netherlands, and I’ve been playing since about age five, including intramural and adult rec leagues. I found myself torn this year during the FIFA 2022 World Cup, as the first knockout game was the Netherlands vs. USA. My main relief going into the game was that I knew I would still have a team to support in the quarterfinals. However, it was hard to see the United States leave the tournament so early.

I also get my kicks swing dancing, typically traditional jazz swing or Lindy Hop. I’ve enjoyed swing dancing for almost 20 years now.

I credit the dancing for helping get me out of my shell. Back in high school, I pretty much stuck to reading my Star Trek books. Today, I enjoy fantasy sci-fi video games to help unwind, and I also play board games with friends about once a week. I have quite the collection of board games.

It’s probably pretty apparent when people get to know me that I’m a rather raging nerd. I strive to learn something new every day. I’m a big sucker for history. I was fascinated by military history as a boy. I now read a lot of classical history and am interested in Roman history specifically. More recently, I’ve been reading more about the Middle East, Africa, China and Japan.

My community involvement includes serving as treasurer on the board for Cappella Romana, which produces and performs Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox chant music nationwide and beyond. The organization tries to honor the past and keep supporting the art for the future.

I’m also board president for A Caring Closet, a Clark County nonprofit that takes in durable medical equipment such as hospital beds, wheelchairs, walkers and other items and provides them free to community members in need.

At home, my wife, Brittany, who consults for Mercer on the states’ intellectual disability programs, and I are relatively newly married, having tied the knot during the pandemic. We have an easy-to-remember wedding date: 10-10-20. We don’t have children yet but we have plenty of four-legged dependents, with two dogs and four cats.

We live in northeast Portland, three blocks from Salt & Straw ice cream shop— which is dangerously close for me—and a block from the dog park—which is too far away if you ask my dogs.

I joined Heritage in May from a larger bank and am thrilled with the move.

Heritage is a bank with a great reputation in the community. It’s a fabulous size that really empowers you as an employee to be able to help your clients in more unique and creative ways than perhaps you’re able to do with a big bank, or a non-community bank. The access to be able to talk to leadership to help process through things and the impact that Heritage is able to have in the community because of its flexibility and size were the main factors that drew me here.

ABOUT PAUL VAN DER SALM

Paul, assistant vide president-relationship banking officer, is based in the Vancouver office and serves the greater Portland metropolitan area. He specializes in helping nonprofits, the commercial and industrial (C&I) industry and professional services with understanding their treasury management needs.