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When the Melle Foundation was established in 1994, Puck van Hilst, Melle's widow, asked John Polder to join the board. For almost thirty years, until 2023, he was the foundation's treasurer. He performed this role with great precision. His dedication to Melle's work and ideas was evident, and he always carried out his duties with commitment and care.

John was a gallery owner and restorer, a man with great respect for the artistry. Together with his wife Mia, he lived in an 18th-century farmhouse in Borne, Overijssel, which they converted into a home and gallery. It was a place where life and art naturally merged.

The friendship between John Polder and Melle went back a long way. Around the time of Melle's exhibition at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in 1972, in which Polder was involved, Melle and his wife Puck began their annual stays in Borne. Polder and his wife Mia also regularly stayed in Amsterdam with their daughters, where they spent a lot of time together. After Melle's death, the bond remained strong. Every week, Polder and Puck discussed the crossword puzzle in NRC by telephone, a small but special ritual.

During one of his stays in Borne, Melle taught his friends' daughters a technique using Ecoline and water. When the cat walked through the paint and left paw prints on the paper, he remarked: “Even the cat is artistic here.” This typifies the atmosphere of the life that John Polder and his wife had created for themselves in Borne, where art was not something distant but part of everyday life.

In 2024, after the merger of the Melle Foundation and the Tranendal Foundation, John Polder handed over his duties to the new board of the merged foundation. We remember him as a committed treasurer, a professional, and a friend.