Ruud "Rudy" Degenaar was a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

-Suriname

Suriname

Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...

 footballer

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

. During his career he played for Heracles Almelo

Heracles Almelo

Heracles Almelo is a football club from Almelo, Netherlands.Heracles Almelo were founded on May 3, 1903 as Heracles, after the demigod son of Zeus. They changed their name on July 1, 1974 to SC Heracles '74 and finally settled on the current name in 1998. The club has won the Dutch national title...

. He died at the age of 25, when on June 7, 1989, he was killed in the Surinam Airways Flight PY764

Surinam Airways Flight PY764

Surinam Airways Flight 764 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in the Netherlands to Paramaribo-Zanderij International Airport in Suriname on a Surinam Airways DC-8...

 air crash in Paramaribo

Paramaribo

Paramaribo is the capital and largest city of Suriname, located on banks of the Suriname River in the Paramaribo District. Paramaribo has a population of roughly 250,000 people, more than half of Suriname's population...

. His father, Dolf Degenaar, was also a professional footballer.

He was invited by Sonny Hasnoe, the founder of the Colourful 11, to be part of the team and travel to Suriname to play in the "Boxel Kleurrijk Tournament" with three Surinamese teams. The Surinam Airways Flight PY764 crashed during approach to Zanderij International Airport, killing 176 of the 187 on-board, including Degenaar and his girlfriend Hedwig Wolthuis, making it the worst ever aviation disaster in Suriname's history. Among the dead were a total of 15 members of the Colourful 11; only three of them survived.