BILL
A brother’s view of an extraordinary man
usually something of a watershed.
There is no gift I can buy for my brother
that he cannot buy better for himself.
What I can do is to tell his story
as seen from my side of the touchline
John Ford
Cape Town, July 2009
1. In the beginning...
Bill
arrived in our family on 2nd July 1949 at a Clinic in Oranjezicht,
Cape Town. Like me, he was born by caesarean section. Janet, our mother, had
gone through the Second World War as Matron of the Brenthurst Military Hospital
while our father, Tom, was doing his duty for his country in the army, and
after the fall of Tobruk in 1942, as a prisoner in an Italian camp. He returned when the hostilities were over
and I appeared in November 1945. So Ma was 36 when I was born and almost 40 at
Bill’s birth: somewhat older than the ideal age for a first-time mother. There
was, we understand, a miscarried baby in between us, whom Ma once said would
have been a daughter named Diana Margaret. Dad had been appointed to his new
post as Officer in Charge of the SA Police Bellville district, and we lived in
7th Avenue, Boston Estate, in the relatively new suburb of
Bellville.
Janet Ford, Brenthurst 1944. Pastel by Cecile Ormerod
There
was actually a bit of confusion about his name. Ma named him William Peter
Douglas Ford, William being her father, Peter her beloved spaniel and Douglas
was Dad’s father. Dad could not accept that the dog came before his father
(with whom he had a pretty poor relationship), so the birth certificate read
“William Douglas Peter. He was baptised Ma’s way. The confusion caused a bit of
a problem years later when Bill came to inherit his share of Grandpa Ford’s
estate and the inheritance had been left
to William Douglas Peter. But it was satisfactorily resolved in the end.
Memories of early childhood are obviously sketchy
and I have snapshots in my mind, enhanced by photographs in family albums. We
are very fortunate to have a family tradition of taking and keeping photographs
and we have annotated photographs dating back to the mid 19th century. Hopefully, photographs taken in the digital era will not be lost in
the ether. Film and paper were much more permanent.
My
earliest memory of my little brother is of trying to take him for a walk in his
pram, going down the steps in front of the house and finding that, at the age
of four, the pram and its contents were too heavy for me. The pram overbalanced
as it went over the top step, somersaulted, dragging me with it, and I ended up
underneath the whole thing, fortunately cushioning the baby’s fall. My face was
cut just below my bottom lip and I still bear the scar, which is concealed by
my beard. He suffered quite badly from ear infections and I suspect that I was
trying to stop him crying by taking him for a walk. The few photographs we have
from the time show him with a cheerful smile or laugh, so he must have been a
happy little boy when his ears weren’t acting up.
Bill’s Christening on 10th October 1949
L to R: Top Row:
Unknown lady (possibly wife or partner of Don Hawke), Neville Fischer
(godfather, holding Bill), Maureen (Bimbo) Fischer, Dad, Don Hawke.
Bottom Row: David Drewett, Ma, John, Granny Duncan, Peter the spaniel
On Blaauwberg beach with Granny Duncan and Peter,
December 1949
John and Bill, Bellville, February 1950
In
their wisdom, the Police decided to transfer Dad to Mafeking in 1950, where he
was in put charge of the Mafeking district, including Vryburg. With the rank of
lieutenant, he was responsible for a very large chunk of the Northern Cape.
Our
house was not ready, so our first home in Mafeking was the Grand Hotel, which,
like most institutions bearing that name, was not very grand at all. Ma was at
her wits’ end, trying to control two small boys on a hotel bedroom, and I was
packed off to school at St Joseph’s Convent in October at the age of 4 years
and 10 months. This gave Ma a bit more time to spend on an energetic little boy
who had all the curiosity expected at 15 months, and who was finding his feet and
using them to the best of his ability.
We
obviously visited our grandparents in Auckland Park, Johannesburg in November
1950, because this photograph bears that date in my album.
Neil and Stella
(Biddy) Fleming, Dad, Grandpa and Granny Ford
I think that the
old lady at the back was Granny’s friend Mrs Jackson
Bill and I appear not to have been very interested in the
camera
In
December that year, Dad had to go to the Police station at Vryburg on a case,
and I remember that we stayed in a Vryburg hotel over Christmas. It was not the
best of experiences, but my dim memory tells me that we made the most of it.
We
were not in Mafeking for very long. Dad had commendably liberal leanings, and
the increasing intensity of the racist dictates of the National Party
government, which had come into power in 1948, was at odds with his way of
running the Police in his district. He had met up in Mafeking with an old
friend from Police College days, Bob Langley, who was now Commissioner of
Police for the Bechuanaland Protectorate. In a strange anomaly, Bechuanaland
was, at that time, the only country in the world, which had its capital outside
its own border, and it was governed from Mafeking. His liaison with Bob and his
ethics were a problem for the authorities, and he was transferred to
Johannesburg in 1952 so that they could “keep an eye” on him.
Bill
and John in Johannesburg, 1952
2. Bechuanaland
We
lived in Johannesburg for a very short time. We had a rented flat in Yeoville
and I spent a horrible few months at Yeoville Primary, where I was called up to
the Principal’s office for playing Cowboys and Indians during break – they
called it unruly behaviour. We hadn’t been there very long when our parents
were visited by senior Bechuanaland government people and their wives. Ma told
us that there was a knock on the door one day and Audrey Langley and Lady
Beetham, wife of the Resident Commissioner, were standing on the step. They
told her that their husbands were taking Dad to lunch and offering him a job in
Serowe, to take charge of the BP Police in the Bamangwato tribal area.
In the back row are Ted Warren, Bill Whitsett, John King, Dad, Terry McDermott
Bob Langley is second from left in the front row
We
arrived in Serowe in the last stages of a seven year drought, having driven
through arid, barren semi-desert in our 1942 Chevrolet coupe. Serowe was in
turmoil because of an attempt by Tshekedi Khama, the Regent, to deny the
chieftainship of the Bamangwato to his nephew, Seretse, who had committed the
unpardonable sin of marrying an Englishwoman, Ruth Williams. The Police had
established a security camp on the outskirts of the village, which was in a
state of martial law after a series of bloodthirsty riots. I was collected by
an armoured car every morning to go to Mrs Blackbeard’s school in the village.
Tom, Janet, John & Bill, Serowe, 1953
As
I said earlier, my memories of these early years are like snapshots, and my
clearest memory of William then is of our morning elocution lessons with Dad,
usually in one of our bedrooms. He was a stickler for correct use and
pronunciation of English and was concerned about our mispronunciations; words
like “rinecoat” come to mind, not that we had much use for such apparel at that
time. We had to recite verses to Dad and I remember Bill insisting that the
animals came “by two, by two”.
Bill and John with Dad in the Serowe garden (Bill
behind the hollyhock)
Our
little world was shattered when it was discovered, late in 1953, that Dad had a
brain tumour. I remember him lying in his bed, groaning and crying out in pain
in the later stages. Ma took him to Johannesburg to see specialists, a friend
put him on a homeopathic diet, he had investigative surgery in Johannesburg
and, when none of this treatment helped, Ma took him to England. After a
hellish four day flight in a BOAC Speedbird via Entebbe, Cairo and Nice, he was
admitted to the Whittington Hospital in Highgate, where he died on 9th
August 1954.
He
had recently been promoted to Captain and had been informed of his next posting
which was, I believe, to Hong Kong.
We were farmed out to friends in Serowe when our parents went to England on this final trip. I stayed with Noël and Vera Redman, who became an important part of our lives and were to become quasi parents to us when we were students in England. Bill went to John King, one of Dad’s officers, and his wife. I don’t remember Bill’s reaction very well. We were in separate houses, so I was not there when the news was broken to him. At his age of just four, I don’t remember him being very badly affected. I remember Noël coming home in the evening and taking me for a drive in his blue Chev and I still have a clear picture of the car’s instruments lit up while he told me that Dad had “gone to Heaven”. At nearly eight, I was shattered, and tried to assume responsibility as “the man of the family”. I can remember trundling a wheelbarrow round the neighbourhood, trying to sell vegetables from our garden: the only way I could think of to earn money.
We had no experience of Ma as the very competent professional person who had given up her career to raise us. I knew her as Mummy who cooked our meals and made a wonderful garden with beautiful flowers and fresh vegetables. Her main activity in Serowe up to this time was organising the Girl Guides.
When she came home, she started work as a nursing sister at the Serowe hospital and our life started to revolve around her resumed career.
John and Bill at the Khama Memorial,
Serowe, 1954
She worked in Serowe for about a year and then accepted a transfer to the Athlone Hospital in Lobatsi. Toward the end of 1955. I remember playing “rodeo” in the front garden of the house. I was the cowboy and Bill was the bull. I was chasing him and he ran into the corner of the house and cut open his forehead. His green T shirt turned red, and he was rushed to the doctor to be stitched. End of rodeo games!
Our
first house in Lobatsi was a fairly unpleasant house on the wrong side of the
railway tracks. I remember that the kitchen was in an outbuilding behind the
house and one had to walk a short way under a corrugated iron roof to reach it.
There was, apparently, no other house available, although I remember Ma saying that
there was a bit of hospital politics involved and that one of the doctors had
interfered to stop her from getting a better house.
Fortunately,
whatever the problem was which had blocked us, it was resolved before very long
and we moved up the hill into a new prefabricated house in the government
village.
This
house was built from asbestos fibre cement sheeting, held together with metal
strips, a bit like a Meccano set. The door frames and windows were steel and
the house clanged when a door slammed or if anything knocked against a wall. No
one was aware, it seems, of the danger of living in this sort of environment
and I suppose we are fortunate not to have suffered any damage to our lungs.
Bill
had a nasty accident when a door was slammed shut by the wind and trapped one
of his fingers, which was split open and had to be stitched. It never recovered
its original shape and the tip was divided into two “blobs”.
Ma
was always very good at meeting people and making friends, a necessary asset in
a small community, where almost everyone worked for the government. There was
an active dramatic society, which held regular play readings and we had regular
Scottish dancing gatherings in the Sisters’ lounge at the hospital with music
on 78 RPM records, usually played by Jimmy Shand and his band.
Athlone Hospital, Lobatsi
Ma
quickly became the centre of a group of younger people, the most significant of
whom were Stephen Henn, Robin Miskin, Eddie and Rentia van der Spuy and Pat
Leeney. Stephen was assistant District Commissioner, Robin assistant manager at
the Standard Bank, Eddie was a meat inspector at the abbatoir and Rentia and
Pat were sisters at the hospital.
Stephen
and Robin were the core of this group as far as we were concerned, and they
became “table boarders” at our house, and were a bit like much bigger brothers.
Ma with Stephen Henn, Bill and the dogs, Jenny Wren
and Penny the spaniel
There
were other people working at the hospital, who became part of our inner circle
and some became lifelong friends. Brenda Murch, the matron, stayed in touch
with Ma for the rest of her life. She married for the first time after she
retired. Her husband was a local farmer, Mr Going. He died after a few years
and she met another kindred spirit and married him. She outlived both her
husbands, and went to New Zealand, where she had family, for the last years of
her life. Kathleen Robertson was a widowed nursing sister who had a son, Harry,
who was a couple of years older than I. Harry went to school at Kingswood in
Grahamstown. He, Bill and I formed a sort of little gang and we spent much of
our free time in the hills behind the hospital. On one occasion, we made a fire
in a little hut we had built out of branches up on the hill. We had made a
fireplace of stones. Needless, to say, the wind came up and fanned the flames
and, in no time, at all we were running down the hill with the whole hillside
in flames. There was no fire brigade, so half the village had to turn out to
put out the blaze. We were not popular.
From back to front: Robin Miskin, Harry Robertson,
Kathleen Robertson, Brenda Murch with Bruce, Bill, Ma with Penny, Stephen Henn
and John, holding Jenny Wren
I
went to the Lobatsi school during the day, and Bill was still too young to go
there, so he tended to be left to his own devices during the day. One of his
favourite occupations was to go down to the abbatoir, where he made friends
with the shunters and engine drivers who brought cattle into the abbatoir and
took the meat away. He rode the engines between Lobatsi station and the
abbatoir and said that he wanted to be an engine driver when he grew up,
something many little boys say, but few have his opportunity to practise.
Bill
had a friend, Alan Titterton, at the end of the road. His father, Paul, was the
government vet, a most important position in a place where cattle farming and meat
production were the most important industries. I can remember that I thought
Alan was a bit of a weed, and that he was mad about cricket.
Alan Titterton and Bill with Stephen's dog Jenny
My Christmas present in 1955, as I was preparing to go to boarding school, was a Kodak Box Brownie camera. I had, apparently, wanted one for quite a long time, and it was the beginning of a lifetime looking through a lens. Somehow, I did not see photography as a potential career until more than ten years later, but I was thrilled with the new acquisition and immediately started taking photographs of friends and family, but only to the extent that my pocket money allowed me to buy film and processing.
A
much better house, an older brick and mortar one, became available in 1956. It
was in the better part of the government village, on the hillside, with a huge
garden, just down the road from the hospital. The bottom part of the garden was
an orchard and we were able to pick oranges, grapefruit and peaches. We
sometimes did a trade with the agricultural research station across the road,
giving them fruit in exchange for raw peanuts, which Ma roasted for us.
Bill with Robin Miskin and Stephen Henn
We obviously visited Johannesburg a few times, because
we have photographs like these:
Aunt Buff and Granny Ford, Bill, Ma and Aunty Biddy
Bill, Japie the Bouvier, Granny Tomlinson, David
Drewett, Mary Drewett, John
John, Bill and Harry Robertson with assorted pets, Chirpy the
budgie, Catten, Jenny Wren and Penny
We
always had a good supply of pets. Ma had a beautiful spaniel, Peter, whom she’d
been given during the war when she was at Brenthurst. He had lost an eye in an
altercation with a cat. He had to be destroyed when we were in Serowe, because
he had contracted rabies and I remember our daily visits to the hospital for
inoculations: one every day for two weeks. Before he died, he fathered a litter
of puppies, and we kept a little bitch named Penny. Stephen had a very sweet
little mongrel name Jenny, alias the Wren and she was almost as much part of
our household as she was of his. There was also a black female cat for a time,
called Catten, but she didn’t last long because she was an inveterate thief.
Bill had a budgie, which he named “Chirpy”. Chirpy came to a sad end when we
went on holiday and no arrangements were made by his owner for him to be fed
and watered.
Living
in a dry, hot country, there was very little relief from the climate and, in
the absence of a swimming pool, our best relief was the garden hose.
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4. Grahamstown
Early
in 1956, we went to see Ma’s sister, Mary, and her husband, Bill Clark, on
their farm Queensdale, near Queenstown in the Eastern Cape.
Gaye and Bill at Queensdale, 1956
Bill with Jennifer and a mastiff, Queensdale
We
had visited our cousins Jennifer, Gaye, Robert and Carol before but this was
our first opportunity to get to know them better. We went on holiday with them
to Cintsa, near East London and Jennifer made pineapple beer in 5 gallon milk
cans. I don’t know what the alcohol content was, but we were not allowed to
drink as much as we would have liked.
Aunt Mary, Uncle Bill, Granny and Ma at Cintsa
I
was starting the next phase of my schooling, at St Andrews Prep in Grahamstown,
and the Clarks were the halfway station. Ma and Bill went back to Lobatsi and I
stayed behind, so that Uncle Bill and Aunty Mary could take me to school. I
remember feeling very insecure, arriving in a strange place where I knew
no-one, and having to fend for myself with no support. Losing Dad had a huge
effect on me, and I was already quite unsure of myself. As often happens in
this situation, I was picked on by a bully named Jimmy Wilson, and my
self-confidence took quite a big knock, which I didn’t overcome for several
years. Fortunately, I made a friend in the second term, who was very supportive,
and helped me enormously.
One
of the first developments at Prep was that I asked to sit at the front of the
class, because I couldn’t see the writing on the board. I was sent to have my
eyes tested and was found to be quite short-sighted. So Ma received a letter
saying that I needed glasses and would she please authorise payment for them?
Bill and his bicycle, Lobatsi
On
my way back to school, at the beginning of the second term, I was standing in
the train corridor, when a bigger boy decided to close the sliding door of the
compartment by kicking against the handle. He didn’t know that my thumb was in
the way, and I ended up not only breaking the thumb, but losing the nail and
all the skin above the knuckle. After I arrived back at school, I had to go to
the sick bay daily to change my dressing and, while waiting in the library for
my turn with Sister Reed, I
met
John Job. He had suffered a very bad electrical burn on a finger, which also
needed dressings. From such things lifelong friendships begin and Bill, in his
turn, became very friendly with Christopher, John’s younger brother, and our
parents formed a very firm friendship as well.
Bill in the bush near Lobatsi with Ma and Penny
With
my being at boarding school, our worlds separated somewhat. Bill started at
Lobatsi school, and entered the world of timetables and homework. He kept his
happy-go-lucky ways, and was notorious for taking his shoes off to paddle in a
puddle and forgetting to pick them up again, which necessitated a search,
usually by Stephen Henn, with Bill trying to remember which puddle.
Bill in line, school sports day, Lobatsi
He
was quite tough physically, and a story which Ma told was of the last time she
tried to give him a hiding. She was sitting in a folding canvas chair, smacking
away, and all he did was laugh. When she asked him why, he told her that he was
watching the stitches in the chair seat parting and waiting for the whole thing
to collapse.
Bill
developed a fascination with pyrotechnics and I can remember arriving at home
just in time to see a landmine explode under my collection of Dinky toy cars
and trucks. If my memory is right, he had hoarded some fireworks from Guy
Fawkes, and carefully joined them with a fuse of some sort, which he buried and
then lit the touch paper. I was just in time to see the explosion. I also
remember that he shaved the heads off matches and stuffed the shavings into
empty .22 rifle cartridge cases, which he crimped closed and hit with a hammer
to make a very satisfactory bang. It seems crazy, when I look back at that
time, how many of our friends not only had air guns, but also regularly used
small calibre rifles and shotguns. Fortunately, there were very few casualties.
The only one I remember happened in 1952 in Mafeking, when Graham Leech and a
friend pulled an old Boer War shell, left over from the siege, out of fish pond
and built a fire under it. They wanted to melt lead from it to make sinkers for
their fishing equipment. The shell exploded and they were both killed. Graham’s
younger brother, Peter, was a good distance away and survived, but he had many
tiny shrapnel fragments under his skin. Dad was an excellent marksman, but he
hated guns, did not like us playing them and disapproved of children having
anything to do with them. We were very unusual among our peers in that we
didn’t have any.
For
the next seven years, the two day train journey to Grahamstown six times a year
became a regular part of my life, and Bill followed me two years later, a long
journey for an eight year old. I don’t remember us travelling together at that
time, but we must have done so.
5. Johannesburg
At
the end of 1957, we moved again. I remember being very upset when Ma announced,
at supper in the Hospital Sisters’ dining room, that we would be moving to
Johannesburg. I saw myself as a country boy, and did not like the idea of
moving to the big city. Grahamstown is a small town, and we were right on the
outskirts, where we could go out into the countryside at any time.
Jack
Penn, having spent the war years working in the Oppenheimer home, Brenthurst,
which he and Ma ran as a hospital specialising in reconstructive surgery, was
given permission to use the name Brenthurst for a new private hospital he
founded in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. The original hospital was near the top of
the hill in Ingram’s Corner, but it outgrew the premises and he built a new
much bigger hospital on the corner of Empire Road and Clarendon Place in the
mid-fifties.
This
was a huge and expensive undertaking and he started to run into problems
because the management team he had chosen were not doing the job well enough.
So he called to Ma for help, and she took over as Matron in 1958. We were given
a large flat on the top floor of Hyde Park Mansions, a 1930s block across Park
Lane from the back of the Clinic, which Jack had bought for use as a Nurses’
Home. It was subsequently renamed Phoenix Place. Bill and I settled in pretty
well, and found that we suddenly had a whole complex full of young nurses, who
became like big sisters to us.
Ma
had a huge job to do, and when the General Manager obstructed her, she fired
him. The hospital was broke as a result of massive over-spending on silly
things like expensive blue and white Wedgwood crockery with the hospital’s
Phoenix logo. Beautiful to look at, but far too fragile for the circumstances
and the breakages were horrendous.
I
spent my three years at St Andrews Prep in Bowker House, which was an overflow
from the main school complex. In my last year, 1958, which was Bill’s first
year, he was put into the six-bedded dormitory I slept in. I have always
regretted my behaviour at that time. I had a friend, Anton “Puppy” de Villiers
and I stood by while he teased and bullied Bill. My loyalties were divided and
I should have been stronger and done more to protect my brother. Fortunately,
his strength of character prevailed and he handled himself very well, without
much help from me.
At
the end of Bill’s first year, I moved up the Cradock Road to St Andrews
College, where I became a resident of Armstrong House. Actually, in my first
year there, I boarded with Mr Anton Murray. There was an overflow of boys from
Armstrong and Espin houses, and eight of us were sent to the Murrays, about
halfway between Prep and College. One of my fellow boarders there was a tall
boy from a German family, who had long floppy blond hair and was a little
eccentric. His name is Achim von Arnim, and he became very well-known as an
excellent – and quite eccentric – wine grower.
During this time at St Andrews, we made some friendships which
expanded to include our family with the family groups of our friends. I
have mentioned John and Christopher Job, but need also to mention
Stuart Myhill, who became Bill’s friend at Prep. He is slightly older than
Bill and moved to College in my final year, where we were both members
of the Armstrong house athletics team. Through our friendships with
John and Christopher, Ma made friends with Leonard and Margaret Job,
through Stuart, she made friends with Harold and Shirley Myhill and we
became friendly with Stuart’s sister Laura. Although all the older
26
generation have moved on out of this existence, these friendships made
at school are still important to us.
Bill and Stuart Myhill at Long Meadow
Bill and Chris Job at Ngodwana
