March 20, 2022

Only the good die young...

Yesterday we received the appalling news of the death of our dear friend and colleague Jeffrey Willems. Just 53 years old, a fatal cardiac arrest brought an unexpected and much too early end to his life.

A year and a half ago, Jeffrey decided to end his radio career, although in the background he always remained involved with our station, that he helped build since 2016.

His ability to motivate and inspire people turned out to be a great hidden talent, something which he wanted to explore furter and dedicate his life to.

After a 2-year study, he recently opened his own practice as a full certified burnout coach.

Presenting another course, he helped thousands of people quit smoking over the past 2 years.

He was ready for a brand new and happy phase in his life that has now ended so abruptly.

Jeffrey was a wonderful person in every way and the best friend anyone could have and my best friend for 34 years.

Rest in peace Jeff.

Lion Keezer
RADIO MI AMIGO INTERNATIONAL

DJ's: Jeffrey Willems†

Email Jeffrey

jeffrey Jeffrey Willems is a director, creator of films, voice-over and multimedia producer. In the past few years, Jeffrey has worked for multiple commercial as well as public broadcasting companies. Ever since he was 8 years old, Jeffrey has been intrigued by the medium that is called radio. Hs first encounter with so-called free radio was listening to off-shore radio stations: Laser 558, Radio Monique, Caroline and Mi Amigo, halfway through the 70's and during the 80's.

When he was a young boy, he frequently asked his older brothers to turn on Mi Amigo on his little radio, after which he had to promise not to touch the tuning knob. Fascinated, Jeffrey listened to the voices of the sea: the radio friends. And he thought: this is what I want to do later.

jeffrey-bij-3FM The first radio station he worked with, was Virginia, a pirate station based in Hilversum. Jeffrey was 13 at the time and started off as all-rounder: first he just picked up the telephone, later on he was allowed to make his first ever radio programme during one hour on a sunday morning. After the illegal radio station got busted, Jeffrey and his pirate colleagues moved to other stations in Hilversum.

In 1985, he decided to give Virginia a second chance in Hilversum, together with some of the station's former DJ's, but they didn't attract many listeners. Jeffrey moved to Baarn with two other Virginia colleagues: Roulette 103. On the 17th of September 1989 Roulette came to an end and so did Jeffrey's illegal career.

jeffrey-old-school-radio2 Afterwards, he has been working as a journalist for two years. In 1992 / 1993, Jeffrey ended up at Sky Radio. Sky Radio and Radio538 were housed in the same building and soon Jeffrey worked for Sky as well as 538, where he produced some programmes during the weekend for a year.

Together with Peter Teekamp, Meta de Vries, Will Luikinga and Stan Haag, Jeffrey was also present when a new Sky Radio project came to life some years later: the Golden Oldies Station. This station was the rival of Radio 10 Gold. After a few years, this station too came to an end.

In 1996, Jeffrey deciced to leave the Sky Radio Group and start his own company as executive producer mainly for radio programmes. He thus went freelancing for the public broadcasters for a few years: at NOS, KRO (Breakfast Club, 3FM) and AVRO (Steenen Tijdperk, Radio 2).

Jeffrey then moved permanently to the AVRO as continual radio host, where he made programmes as Zondagvitaminen, De Overnachting, Steenen Tijdperk, Top 2000 and the 70's / 80's week. Thanks to the De Overnachting, Old School was created during saturday night. Later it was called Back To The Old School, which was on air between April 2000 and April 2001. This soul programme made a second start on Radio 2 sunday night. You can still find Back To The Old School online as a web station.

jeffrey-regie-omroep-max

In 2010 Jeffrey extended his business from radio and voice producions to more multimedial concepts. He leaves the AVRO after 12 years in order to be able to work more innovatively and creatively. Like this, Willems develops video concepts for businesses and he experiments with documentaries for sale. Jeffrey sees his films as radio in pictures, in which emotion, feeling and authenticity play an important role. He specialises in producing e-learning videos as well. He also works as director, desginer and advisor at Omroep Max and he compiles music for several businesses and web radio stations.

Since 2016 Jeffrey presented some of his typical classics on Mi Amigo International: 'Lost and Found'.

As director of a well known radio program on Dutch national Radio 5 ('Tineke'), he met a guest in the program who gave anti-smoking courses. That concept appealed to him and contact was quickly established.

Jeffreys intuition proved to be right: his ability to inspire and motivate people proved to be a long hidden talent. He started to give courses himself, with which he subsequently helped thousands of people quit smoking.

Jeffrey decided to focus entirely on that lay and stopped all media activities (unfortunately also including his weekly program at Mi Amigo International). He started his own coaching practice in december of 2020 and after a tough study which he successfully completed became a certified burn-out coach.