Chris Smith: Roy Jordan will live forever in Nivelles

Jan Jordan Ponts and a taxi-load of relatives and friends are back from Belgium, where a grateful town and a U.S. ambassador honored them as stand-ins for a liberator.

“It was an amazing day,” said Ponts, a Santa Rosan and the ever-more-proud daughter of World War II army Capt. Roy Jordan, who was just 36 when he succumbed to cancer in Fort Bragg in 1955.

Eleven years earlier, in September of 1944, Jordan commanded Troop C of the 113th Calvary Reconnaissance Squadron as it wrested the small city of Nivelles from German forces, ending four years of Nazi occupation.

Last fall, on the 70th anniversary of liberation, Nivelles resident Olivier Bleret, acting on behalf of Mayor Pierre Huart, launched a search for relatives of Capt. Jordan.

Bleret found Jan Ponts’ sister, Judy Jordan Loomer, in Novato. He asked her family’s permission to elevate Roy Jordan posthumously to an honorary citizen of Nivelles.

Deeply honored, Loomer and Ponts traveled to Belgium recently with four family members and friends Irma and Gary Bachelor of Sebastopol.

Ponts said the welcome and the ceremony making him the first American honorary citizen of Nivelles were lovely, extraordinary. Among the dignitaries there was U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Denise Bauer.

Ponts intends to return one day to Nivelles and to the handsome photograph and plaque that adorn a wall at City Hall in tribute to her father. She’ll take along his great-grandchildren.

“They need to see this,” she said.

BRANDON AT FIRST: Five Santa Rosa buddies of Chicago Cubs first-base coach Brandon Hyde, who played at both Montgomery High and SRJC, will be rooting for him and his team this afternoon at Wrigley Field.

Jeff Peterich and the others are on a dream of a baseball trip. They caught both Cubs-Cardinals playoff games in St. Louis, then followed Hyde and his team home to Chicago.

Peterich found the environment at Busch Field to be quite staid. But, he said from the storied Wrigley Field, “This is a completely different vibe.”

The Santa Rosans are having a ball with Hyde and his dad, Barry, a retired Santa Rosa teacher.

Brandon Hyde enjoys a rich and fascinating career in baseball, though as a player he was active only a few years and didn’t quite make it to the big time. After a good run managing minor-league teams in the Florida Marlins organization, he was named the Marlins’ bench coach in 2010.

This could win you a trivia contest: In 2011, Hyde served for one game as manager of the Marlins following the resignation of Edwin Rodriguez.

Along with his dad and his Santa Rosa chums, his wife, Lisa, and the two younger of their three children cheer and visualize him and his team washing away history’s longest World Series drought.

Go, Cubbies, go.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.