Nobody seems to know what possessed Dick Voneugen to pick up a truck horn from a heavy hauler and use it to trumpet the start of a race, but it became his signature sound.
For decades, whether it was the Labour Day Run, Prince George Iceman, Prince George Triathlon, Kids’ Triathlon or a race involving the Prince George Roadrunners, no starter’s pistol was needed, not with Voneugen blowing his horn, which could be heard from blocks away.
A relentless community booster drawn by his love for outdoor sports — especially the kind that pushed athletes to try to beat the clock — Voneugen died Monday at Jubilee Lodge.
He was 92.
“You can pretty much name any organizational event in Prince George that was community-based, and Dick was involved,” said Kathy Lewis, who got to know Voneugen through her own involvement in the Labour Day Classic, Iceman and Ice Oval committees.
“That horn is definitely something everybody remembers, and so many of us tried to use it, but nobody could make it work like Dick did.”
“He used to put his climbing spurs on and climb the poles to hang the Labour Day Classic signs. He’d do that early in the morning because he probably wasn’t supposed to, but Dick sometimes just did his own thing when he thought it was right.”
Voneugen loved events like the BC Seniors Games (he competed in the Games from age 68 to 79). A reformed smoker, he abruptly changed his life for the better when he ditched his smokes, cut down on drinking, and took up running, becoming super-fit. He encouraged people to look after themselves, stay active past their prime, and test themselves in competition, because that’s how he lived his own life. If you called his house and he wasn’t there, his voice on the answering machine would say, “I’m probably out for a ski, a run or a bike ride. Just leave a message, and I’ll call you back.”
In 1979, Voneugen and Prince George Track and Field Club president Tom Masich organized the Corporate Cup, an adult track and field meet that involved city businesses. For decades, they maintained their collaboration on organizing sporting events.
One of the big ones was the Prince George to Boston Marathon road race, an event that inspired race participant Terry Fox to attempt his cross-country Marathon of Hope in 1980. Prince George was Fox’s first marathon, and he and Rick Hansen (who later completed his Man in Motion world tour in a wheelchair) completed the Prince George course in 1979.
It was renamed the Labour Day Classic when Voneugen and the Roadrunners took it on in 1984, and he remained part of the organizing committee until 1998. In 1981, he organized the first Terry Fox Run to raise money for cancer research and served on that committee until 1998.
“He made a really strong connection to Terry Fox at the PG to Boston Marathon, and even a couple of years ago, Dick and I talked about that connection and how important it was to him to have met Terry and to have been part of his legacy with the Terry Fox Run,” said Bill Masich, Tom’s son.
“It was a big deal for Dick. He got to be involved in that at an adult level, and I think it really fuelled him and gave him the wherewithal to say, ‘I can contribute, help out, and be active in my community in ways that I haven’t before,’ and we’re a much better, much richer community for that.”
Voneugen competed for years in running events put on by the Prince George Roadrunners, a group he helped form in 1978. He was in his 40s when he started the Dick Voneugen Birthday Fun Run on the Berg Lake trail at Mount Robson. It became an annual event in which he ran one kilometre for every year of his age. At 60, he started counting backwards, so it was one fewer kilometre in each subsequent year, until his ailing back and hip forced him to stop running.
“For years and years, he organized track and field for the (BC) Seniors Games for Zone 9, and he encouraged lots of people to come out and take part,” said Masich. “He did all the organization and all the paperwork, and helped represent our region all over the province in a positive and proactive way.”
In 1998, Voneugen joined Lewis in forming the Prince George Ice Oval Society, which has overseen the volunteer operations and fundraising efforts for the city’s 400-metre skating oval at its current site at Exhibition Park every year since 2007.
“He was a bit of a bulldog,” said Lewis. “When he got his mind around something he wanted to have happen, like the oval, he’d certainly put the pressure on politicians and people who could help with fundraising, but it was always for the best interest of the community. It was never about himself.”
“He was exceptionally generous with his time and had a strong interest in being inclusive, making sure anybody who wanted to run, or go for a bike ride or go skating, had the opportunity to do that.”
Voneugen was involved in the construction of Otway Nordic Centre in the late 1980s and the Cranbrook Hill Greenway Trail that connects Otway to UNBC and Blue Spruce campground at Highway 16. He was treasurer of the Greenway committee and organized the buy-a-metre endowment program that funded the construction of the 25-kilometre trail.
“He was an enthusiastic volunteer and always very positive about things—‘We can do it.’ He had that enthusiasm and boundless energy to make things happen, and for a lot of people, it was contagious,” said his good friend Robin Draper.
“It was his support and enthusiasm that led to the development of the Cranbrook Hill Greenway. It was in 1995 and 1996 that we started moving on that, and over the next three or four years, towards the year 2000, we had the first Greenway ski loppet.”
“He did have a stubborn streak, but sometimes that’s what’s needed to make things happen.”
Voneugen was born July 24, 1932, in Amsterdam, where he lived with his twin sister and younger brother (both deceased). His father developed respiratory problems, so the family moved to the more rural town of Soest, where they lived next to the Dutch royal palace.
In a Seniors Scene column written by Kathy Nadalin in 2014, Voneugen talked about his childhood.
"I was only 13 years old when the war ended. I was sheltered more or less from the worst, except for the hunger. My parents would go on what was called a 'hunger trip,' which meant loading up the bicycle and taking household items to farmers to trade for food. The Germans occasionally stopped people on their return trip and confiscated not only the food but the bike as well. We also had to be very careful because we were sheltering a Jewish family of four for about a year in some hidden spaces in our house."
“After the war, we all three had the good fortune to go to a special school that was started by Kees Boeke. The school operated similarly to our Montessori schools; we progressed by our own pace, and peer discipline was decided by the students collectively. The concept was phenomenal. We had small mentor groups, and we called the teachers by their first names. The students were also the janitors. We cleaned the school ourselves daily. I can claim that I cleaned toilets alongside Princess Beatrix and her two sisters, the daughters of Queen Juliana. Princess Beatrix eventually became Queen Beatrix and reigned from 1980 to 2013.”
After his father died in 1949, Voneugen went back to school to study electronics for four years, then served 18 months of military duty with the army. In April 1956, he and two friends decided to come to Canada, where they lived with his former Dutch neighbours in Port Alberni. He worked as a choker man at a logging site, where he learned how to climb trees using cork boots—a skill that would later serve him well in Prince George.
Voneugen’s knowledge of electronics led to him becoming a two-way radio technician working in the woods of Vancouver Island for MacMillan Bloedel. When the company contracted the work to BC Tel, Voneugen switched jobs and became a field technician for Motorola, based in Victoria. The company wanted to expand its operations and needed a salesman, so in 1965, Voneugen moved to Prince George, where the pulp mills had just opened. He eventually became the regional sales manager, overseeing eight branch offices in the Interior. He was married for 10 years, but he and his wife separated.
In 1994, Motorola wanted him to move to Vancouver, but he loved his lifestyle in Prince George. After 30 years with the company, at age 62, he retired, which gave him more time for cross-country skiing, cycling, running, and volunteering for organizations and special events.
Voneugen is the only person selected twice as Prince George Citizen of the Year (1995 and 2007), and in 2003, he was inducted into the Prince George Sports Hall of Fame’s builder/administrator category.
“Dick was certainly a builder, and he was so critical to moving forward major projects in our city, things like Otway, the Greenway Trails, or the ice oval,” said former Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond.
“When I think about all those places, I think about his passion for adding capacity and creating opportunities, especially on the sporting side—but not just that alone.”
Bond said some of her favourite photos of Dick were taken with her at city hall during the annual tulip planting ceremony commemorating the Canadian Armed Forces’ April 1945 liberation of Holland at the end of the Second World War.
“We said thank you to Canadians for all they did for us and for our Dutch families,” said Bond. “Dick will be really missed, and I hope people have a sense of the legacy he left, because he was one of the ones who made a huge difference in our community.”
His closest relatives were his nieces, one in Detroit and one in Amsterdam.
A celebration of his life is being planned for April at the Exhibition Park ice oval.
