Master Sgt. Wierenga, a hero hiding in plain sight, dies at 86 in Williamsburg

Retired Army Master Sgt. Jan “Dutch” Wierenga lived a life devoted to his “new” country, its military and eventually the CIA.

When he died Jan. 9 at age 86, many of his Williamsburg neighbors knew little of his career and his exploits because until about a year ago, he was still a contract employee with the CIA — and secrecy abounded.

A student, teammate and friend, Kim Kipling, recently wrote a partial biography about him, “Dutch: From Rising Sun to the Rise of Jihad, Six Decades of Service” — partial because the CIA redacted significant elements from portions written about his time with the agency. Also, there is a 90-minute video on YouTube devoted to his life and career.

Wierenga “was kind of quiet. I think you might call him stoic,” his wife Kathy said. “He didn’t toot his own horn. People who knew him (back in the day) would tell me, ‘your husband is a legend’ or ‘your husband is this’ or ‘your husband is that’. What I know is that he lived much of his life protecting this country.

“He is a patriot. He was my hero!”

Kipling, who saw his friend just a week before the stroke that eventually took his life, said Wierenga “probably would like to be remembered as a man who came to America, loved it and gave everything he had to it.”

A resident of Williamsburg for the past 30 years, he was born in 1936 in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. The child of a wealthy Dutch planter and a descendant from hereditary nobility, he lived in the style of an upper-class family until 1942 when Japan invaded.

Over the next four years, he and his family survived a Japanese internment camp and then imprisonment by a local government during the Indonesian Civil War. Along with other Dutch citizens, they were finally able to flee to safety.

By 1952, at age 16, Wierenga “was running combat patrols in the jungle areas of his uncle’s rubber plantation” after he had returned to help his extended family, Kipling said.

Eventually, he made his way to The Netherlands and volunteered for the army there “because he needed money and he knew about combat patrols as a teenager. So naturally the army was there,” his biographer added.

Kathy said he came to the United States in 1960 because he had always wanted to live here. “He wanted to be an American. He didn’t have to join the Army, but he wanted to give back. He was in the Army for 24 years, much of it as a Green Beret.”

Kipling said Wierenga breezed through basic training in 1962. “Never one to do anything halfway, he immediately volunteered to become a paratrooper.” He first served in the 82nd Airborne Division, and in this first of three tours in Vietnam, he was with the 101st Airborne Division.

Then, he had the opportunity to try for the 5th Special Forces, which led to the Green Berets. Wierenga became a Recon Team leader in the then-secret Military Assistance Command, Vietnam/Studies and Observation Group. Kipling said this was an elite unit of commandos that ran some of the most dangerous, highly classified missions of the Vietnam War.

Wierenga earned the Silver Star, four Bronze Stars, two for valor and at least two Purple Hearts.

Then, Dutch, as he was called, did something even more amazing, Kipling said. “He volunteered again, joining the Central Intelligence Agency.” First, he was a paramilitary operations officer involved “in clandestine missions all over the globe, in some of the worst conditions and most dangerous places imaginable.”

Wierenga later served as a CIA training instructor, spending much time at The Farm, Camp Peary, outside Williamsburg. Toward the end of his career, he served in a training support role, finally fully retiring in the spring of 2022 at age 85.

“Dutch loved being a soldier, and he was an exceptional soldier,” Kipling said at a memorial service held for Wierenga on Friday. “He loved being a teacher (and) was never too busy, never too proud and never too self-adsorbed so as to be unwilling to teach anyone who wanted to learn from him. … In doing this, he made uncounted numbers of Americans better soldiers, better professionals and better people.”

Kipling stressed that Dutch also loved his family: his wife Kathy; his first wife Cathy, who preceded him in death; his daughter Dina; grandsons Bradley and Nathan; and others. He demonstrated his family love “like many men of his generations, not through flowery words or extravagant gestures,” Kipling added.

“Dutch instead showed his love through his constant, abiding care, his steady provision, his unflinching willingness to say what needed to be said and do what need to be done in the best interest of those he loved… He did his duty to his family as he saw it with the same dedication and deep, abiding affection he applied to his duty to his country.”

Wierenga will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Wilford Kale, kalehouse@aol.com