Mrs Erasmus passed away after a long battle with cancer. She will be remembered by many as Ma Erasmus and for her teaching Latin, English and, most memorably, Afrikaans. In 2011 she was appointed a Life Vice-President of the Old Boys Association. This was in recognition of her formidable contribution to the school and the classroom. Below follows a letter from Owen Frisby (1966), a tribute to a great teacher.
The Sixty Sixers really respected and appreciated her – as schoolboys and afterwards. Ma was an excellent teacher. I was recently reminded of this when I was helping my teenage daughters with their homework and stunned them with my knowledge of suiwer Afrikaans. Her classroom was probably the last time I heard any!
I surprised the girls even further by producing a photograph of her, in her nineties and a cancer survivor nogal, happily attending our 45th reunion at the Old Boys Club in 2011.
She was uniquely willing and keen to be a part of these events. I know this because it was my pleasant duty to invite her to both the 40th and the 45th. At the former she produced a document that many of us had signed as schoolboys in the sixties undertaking, I think, to live a good, healthy, God-fearing life, speaking Afrikaans free of anglisismes.
They don’t make them like this anymore, do they?
May she rest in peace and with the satisfaction of a job well done in the knowledge that it has permeated in this family and probably very many others through to the next generations. She was a caring individual and a teacher of the highest order. Of such individuals is PBHS made.
Letter from: Owen Frisby, Matric 1966