Spending his youth growing up in the south, Van was adventurous, intelligent, and handsome. When he was a young man, his family moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi. Around when he was 11, he had the unfortunate incident of getting shot in the right eye with a BB gun - his own in fact - while he and his brothers were out playing. Sadly this caused him to lose vision in that eye. Around 1960 the family moved to Page, AZ, where Van finished high school, and then subsequently married Ruth Carolyn Jones in Coconino, Arizona, on September 23, 1961. Soon they welcomed two beautiful boys, Phillip, in 1962, and Kenneth in 1964. He had gotten a scholarship to Northern Arizona University for vocals and banking, but began learning the trade of finishing and ironworking on the Lower Granite dam to support his growing family instead. They moved up to Milton-Freewater Oregon around 1966, however as things go sometimes, their marriage concluded in August of 1972.

Van loved to fly. Quickly becoming proficient in the early 1970s, he took to the air quite naturally. It was around this time he met Joni-Dawn Mathewson, and they decided to buy an airplane together. Joni-Dawn worked tirelessly and refinished the 210 Cessna. He would frequently take the Cessna out to the skies, flying loop-de-loops and generally just enjoying the freedom of being out in the world. This finally ended one day as the plane was grounded when the landing gear did not deploy as expected while he was inspecting a fire near the airport. In 1973, Van and Joni-Dawn moved to Phoenix, AZ, and got married; in 1980 they were surprised with a daughter, Dawn. Van also had a love for baseball and football, with a steadfast loyalty to his home teams, the Diamondbacks and Cardinals. He was also a very active and enthusiastic member of the church, playing in the worship group on Sundays. He was a skilled guitarist and bassist, and also continued to have a wonderful singing voice his whole life.

Throughout the 1970s he continued to hone his craft, becoming a master ironworker and joined the Local 75, which he remained a member of through his final days. In his younger years he would frequently scale dizzying high rises to build their infrastructure - allegedly with very little in the way of safety equipment (because, the 70s). One of his favorite "ironworker jokes" he used to tell, was about dropping a tool from high up onto someone who wasn't wearing their helmet. The joke is that you shout down "Hey, would 'ya wipe the blood off that and toss it back up here?" After a fruitful career with the ironworkers union, Van opened his own business and ran a successful ironworking shop, Zebra Construction Inc. Van loved donating his time to organizations and 501c3's around the Phoenix area, including the local women's shelter. In his 40s, he suffered a fairly bad back injury while working, resulting in multiple back surgeries over the subsequent years to maintain mobility. Although this certainly altered his path as after that he was in pretty constant pain, he didn't let that stop him from having an extremely positive attitude towards life. He and Joni-Dawn continued to tour the United States in the RV and always found the joy and fun in each day.