Husband Kees van Maasdam

Queer Places:
Prinsengracht, 1017 KP Amsterdam, Netherlands

Herman Stok (Rotterdam, 11 July1927 – Amsterdam, 2 June 2021) was a Dutch radio and television presenter. Exactly half a century after their first acquaintance, Stok and Kees van Maasdam married on 12 June 2000 in Amsterdam. [3][4] At the time of Van Maasdam's death in 2019, they had been in a relationship for almost 69 years.

Herman Stok was an accountant at a Hilversum wholesaler in fruit and vegetables. He met Kees van Maasdam in 1950. He saw him once on the train. Nice boy though. On June 12, Monday morning, Stok had just bought nougat chocolates, he saw the same boy coming out of the dry cleaners in the Herenstraat in Hilversum. Thought: damn, that's it, how do I get into conversation with him? Kees had noticed. Herman had cycled behind him, he stopped and greeted. Kees: "Shall we have a cup of coffee tonight with a sausage roll at the Karseboom aan de Groest?" Herman: "A sausage roll. How could you have it!?" It was really love at first sight, mutual. Kees needed a new boarding house, Herman's mother allowed him to move in with them. Herman had not yet 'come out' to his parents, they knew nothing about it, that took another five years. Kees brought his own bed, but he never slept in it, Herman had a double bed. His mother once said: "I wish everyone slept like Kees, I just have to straighten it out." They had to set the alarm, because his father brought everyone tea with a rusk on the bed. Then, of course, Kees had to lie in his own bed.

Kees van Maasdam had founded the Jeugd Amateur Radio Omroep (JARO) in his attic room a year earlier in Haarlem. The JARO was an idealistic initiative to connect the youth of the world via the radio waves. Stok and Van Maasdam got into a relationship and Stok started presenting programs at the youth broadcaster and became the chairman of the broadcasting board. Due to lack of money, the initiative died in 1952. In an interview in 1987, Stok claimed that a grant application to the Prince Bernhard Fund was not granted because 'you cannot let people who are homosexual work in an organisation with young people'. From the idea arose at the AVRO the radio program Op De Jonge Golf and the youth department Minjon. [1][2]

From 1947, Van Maasdam also worked at the radio department of the VARA. When in the summer of 1950 the regular presenter of the youth program Op de disselwagen dropped out, he pushed Stok forward. Since then Stok has worked on many programs. In 1963 he became the presenter of Time for Teenagers, conceived by Co de Kloet and previously presented by Dick van't Sant. On November 30, 1963, a hit parade was introduced in the program, the Time for Teenagers Top 10, which was compiled by the employees. Stok was a reporter at the radio broadcast around The Beatles' visit to the Netherlands in June 1964 and as such also did the interviews with the band members. From 1961 he presented the first Dutch youth music program Top of Flop for the VARA and for the KRO the later successor, Disco Duel. In that sense, he was the first Dutch television disc jockey. At Top of Flop, the flop candidate was called off with a squeeze. In the 1970s Stok presented as successor to Joop Söhne together with Letty Kosterman, the Saturday morning program Z.O. A well-known part of the program was guessing a voice of a well-known Dutchman, such as later at the Stemband with Kees Schilperoort. Stok also presented the music programs MIX and Waiting for midnight on Hilversum 3 in the 1970s. On 1 January 1988, at the suggestion of the VARA, he took up a special early retirement scheme. [2] In 2007 and 2012 he was a guest presenter at Omroep MAX on Radio 5 Nostalgia.

At the beginning of May 2021, Stok was diagnosed with cancer. [5] He died less than a month later at the age of 93. [6][7]