It's kismet: What better career for a man named Harry Hollander than importer of Dutch tulip bulbs? Although the bulb industry is a fraction of the Netherlands' gross national product, it's pretty much all Americans know about the country.If it were not for Hollander and his tulips, the man says, Dallas springs would be almost colorless and the local arboretum would not be known nationwide for its annual bulb fest called Dallas Blooms.
Hollander was not born to the trade; his father was a dairy farmer. He went to work as a teenager in North Holland's bulb industry, where sandy dunes hold back the North Sea. By his mid-20s, he was sent to the northeastern United States to sell his employer's bulbs to retailers, and later he took on basically the western half of the United States as his sales territory.
Hollander and his Dutch-born wife, Hetty, settled in Dallas in 1965 to raise their two boys, and eventually Hollander started his own company. After he bought out another Dallas firm, the import company became known as Abbott-Ipco, the biggest importer of bulbs in the Southwest, Hollander says.
To read the rest of this story please go to: The Dallas Morning News
