Clandestine publishing effort rounded off with television career

Resistance man later an Air Force officer

TAMPA, Florida – The former Oosterhout resistance man, Marinus (Mark) Damen, who published the clandestine bulletin De Vrije Stem (The Free Voice) during World War II in his bedroom, has died at age 85 in Florida as a retired public broadcasting pioneer and executive.

Following the liberation of North Brabant in the Fall of 1944, Damen volunteered for service in the Dutch military and received basic training as well as meteorological instruction in England and served for over two years in the Dutch East Indies.

Damen, who married Louise Major in Paris in 1953, immigrated with his U.S.-born wife to the U.S. in 1957 and worked in various public television positions in New Orleans (WYES), Pittsburg (WQED) and Gainesville, Florida (WUFT), before rising to the top at Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting, Inc., from which he eventually retired.

An officer in the Royal Netherlands Air Force, Damen served at its headquarters in The Hague, from which he was transferred to the international military headquarters of NATO, in Paris, France. After a two-year term in Paris, and a further two years as a writer and a consultant in the Hilversum vicinity, Damen moved with his family to the U.S.

Mark Damen is survived by his wife Louise, his son, Mark Laurens Damen, his daughter-in-law Frances Titchener, both professors at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, and numerous relatives in the Netherlands.