There are stories the van den Hende family will never tell, memories the children will never share, and lives that will never be the same.
The Eynesbury family of five was returning from a holiday to Amsterdam when their lives were tragically cut short by the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.
Malaysian born Shaliza Zain Dewa, 45, her Dutch-born husband, Johannes van den Hende, and their three children, Piers, 15, Marnix, 12, and Margaux, 8, were among 298 people killed when the Boeing 777 was shot out of the sky over Ukraine on July 17 last year.
The children should have come home to their friends, teammates and school teachers telling of all the wonderful places they went, things they saw and the foods they tasted.
Instead, their friends, teammates and school teachers gathered at Eynesbury Homestead last year to pay tribute to the “talented, loving and close family”.
A year after the MH17 disaster, Piers’ soccer coach, David Watson, remembers him as “a very happy-go-lucky” teenager.
“All-in-all, he was just a great kid,” Watson said. “We were so devastated when we heard the news – Piers was such a nice kid.”
The Melton Phoenix Football Club will name its best and fairest award the Piers award in honour of their late team member.
At Melton Swimming Club, where Marnix swam for about four years, coach Nikki Thorp said the 12-year-old was mature beyond his age.
“He didn’t have to stand out like a lot of the boys his age. He came to training and just did what he had to do,” Thorp said. “But it took me many months to realise Marnix won’t be walking through the doors ever again.” Thorp remembered Margaux as a “breath of fresh air”.
“She was a young girl, always dancing, always coming to the pool area and looking up to her big brother, Marnix.”
The club has chosen to name its encouragement award after Marnix.
No one will ever find out if Piers could have been the next Ronaldinho, or Marnix and Margaux great Olympic swimmers, but everyone knows the family should have had many more decades to look forward to
life.
