Cornelius Van Dam, 89; dairy owner endured as L.A. grew

In the 1950s, Cornelius Van Dam’s new farm was surrounded by a patchwork of dairies that earned the southeast Los Angeles County region a nickname: The L.A. Milk Shed.

Hundreds of Dutch dairy farmers started settling the area more than 70 years ago, but Van Dam was one of the last of that vanishing breed. He watched explosive urban growth entice one dairy farmer after another to sell. By 1992, his Valley View Farms in La Mirada was one of four commercial dairies left in the county.

He never wanted to part with his 25 acres, he often recalled, because he had become so attached to the town.

Van Dam, whose farm shut down in the mid-1990s, died of pneumonia Monday at his longtime home on his former farmland, his family said. He was 89.

“He was the No. 1 guy, really, in terms of local dairy farmers and as a friend,” said John Vanderham, owner of nearby Norwalk Dairy, one of two commercial dairies that survive in Los Angeles County. The other is High Desert Dairy in Lancaster.

Born in the Netherlands on May 14, 1917, Van Dam immigrated to Southern California in 1930 with his parents and six siblings.

His father ran a dairy farm in El Monte, but by the 1940s the area was already too crowded, Van Dam said in an interview last year on www.adviceradio.com.

The fourth-generation farmer wanted to live “out in the country,” he said in the interview, so he bought land about 20 miles south of his father’s farm.

With his wife, Florence, a bank teller he met while signing a loan to buy cows, he set out to build a state-of-the-art operation at Rosecrans and Valley View avenues in the early 1950s.

From the start, there were signs of the change to come. When he saw the ranch across the street being converted into housing, Van Dam decided to build a small drive-through market, known as a “cash and carry,” which opened in 1953. Suburban families in the growing car culture needed a convenient place to shop, he said in the 2005 interview.

“When people first moved into La Mirada, so many of them were strangers, even to Southern California. We became almost a place for them to meet each other and visit,” Van Dam, his voice still carrying traces of a Dutch accent, said in the interview.

Valley View Farms was one of the few dairies that produced, processed and distributed its own milk, his family said. Among its enduring customers were local school districts.

Every spring for about 15 years, he threw out the first pitch at Van Dam Stadium, a Little League field on the farm that he leased to the community beginning about 1960. He charged a dollar a year.

He was involved in his community in other ways, including serving on the La Mirada planning commission and as choir director at his church. Deeply religious, he often gathered with his family to sing hymns in English and Dutch.

By 1992, Valley View Farms was the largest of the county’s remaining four urban dairies, with a herd of 1,000 cows.

He had raised five children there, including a son, Cornel, who returned after college to help run the enterprise.

When the younger Van Dam wanted to expand the herd, the family transferred the cattle operation to Idaho in 1994. Cornel Van Dam operated a farm there until it merged with another dairy in 2001.

Except for the three acres surrounding the family’s home, much of the La Mirada farm has been turned into an industrial park with a name that salutes the past: Valley View Farms Business Center.

The changes in the area over the last half-century were “almost unbelievable,” Van Dam said in the radio interview, recalling a vanished rural landscape of orange and olive groves and alfalfa fields.

“It was just a beautiful time of living.”

In addition to Florence, his wife of 61 years, and son, Van Dam is survived by four daughters, Cheryl Rushing of Buena Park, Florine Enmeier of San Clemente, Arlyne Sargent of Hamilton, Mass., and Andrea Gayhart of Sierra Madre; 10 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Services will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Emmanuel Reformed Church, 15941 Virginia Ave., Paramount.

Instead of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Faith Reformed Church, 11226 E. Excelsior Drive, Norwalk, CA 90650.

valerie.nelson@latimes.com