Alice Besseling

Alice Besseling was born into a Roman Catholic family in Hem, a small community in West-Friesland, in 1944. From a young age she was interested in governance, first in youth organizations and later in professional organizations – in 1971 she was working for IBM when the Dutch government passed legislation mandating works councils for larger corporations, and she became the first elected member of the IBM works council.[2] After her marriage she moved to Alphen aan den Rijn, where in 1978 she was elected to the city council for the newly formed Christian Democratic Appeal, a centrist-right coalition of Christian parties. She served on the city council until 1990. During her tenure she was active in supporting weaker members of society; she claimed that "social policy is too important to leave to left-wing parties".[3] With a neighbor, Anke Bakker, she spent fifteen years researching the abandoned and razed Jewish cemetery on the Aarkade in Alphen aan den Rijn,[4] uncovering much of the local Jewish history in the process (later the topic of a book by Bakker[5]). In 2012, the city turned the abandoned cemetery into a city park and placed a monument remembering the Jewish community.[6] Besseling was a founding member of the local women's group for the CDA, and until her death she was a member of her party's provincial women's group.[7] In 2008, her contributions to the community were rewarded with membership in the Order of Orange-Nassau.[8]

After resigning from the Alphen city council, she worked for eleven years at the Centre for Law in the Information Society at Leiden University, and retired in 2010.[9]

Other community activities in Alphen includes founding[3] and serving as a board member of a dance club for elderly singles,[10] as president of the local athletic association Avanti,[11] and as lector in Alphen's St. Boniface church.[7]