A South Bend family who achieved great success in the tire business has given the University of Notre Dame a gift aimed at improving mental health, reducing substance abuse, and preventing suicide, including locally.
Born in the mid-1920s, Wilma and Peter Veldman grew up on farms in Holland and lived through the Nazi occupation during World War II. As young immigrants, the couple arrived in South Bend in the early 1950s.
They eventually started and operated a variety of automotive-related businesses in South Bend, beginning with a two-bay Standard Oil service station and ending with Tire Rack, an online distributor of automotive tires – now the largest online tire distributor in the U.S.
Their donation, an amount the university isn’t disclosing, will fund the Veldman Family Psychology Clinic. It will unite the work of Notre Dame’s existing centers for family and children studies and suicide prevention, along with a major new substance use initiative. It also will expand the availability of affordable mental health counseling services to South Bend area residents.
Sarah Mustillo, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, says the pandemic raised awareness of how interconnected trauma, substance abuse and suicide are.
"But it's a problem that we've been trying to address for years at Notre Dame," Mustillo says. "This new initiative is going to really help us to kind of take that to the next level. What we are trying to do now is really invest in providing solutions to these problems that so many Americans are struggling with."
