PBHSOB ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER

Dear Old Boy

The 96th Annual Old Boys’ Dinner was once again, and quite possibly for the last time for the foreseeable future, held in the School dining hall on 6 June 2015, after a year’s gap with the 2014 dinner having been held in the old Abernethy Hall, before the construction of the new hall commenced.

Old Boys were welcomed with the ever-popular sound of the Dixie Band playing out on the balcony, and a happy hum of reminiscence, as friends from years gone by met up to spend an evening together and to share in great food and, in the words of our esteemed Master of Ceremonies, a few “lemonades”.

The evening was a great success, with some of the best speakers the dinner has seen for a number of years, keeping us all well entertained. Trevor Quirk, as always our MC for the evening, had many an anecdote to bring back the happy memories of boyhood and the mischievous acts that we all got up to, proving that no matter the era, Boys High boys are all the same. Trevor’s “pokes” at School House also spurred on the audience throughout the night. Oh, how nothing has changed.

One of the recurring items on the agenda at each Annual Dinner is the welcoming of the attendees by decade. Old Boys who matriculated before 1950, right through to Old Boys who matriculated during 2014 were present at the dinner, all interspersed amongst one another; yet another great testament to the love and loyalty for the School that we all share, regardless of age.

Chairman of the Old Boys Club, James Lourens, said grace, and Harry Todd and Glen Corlett gave toasts to absent friends and to South Africa respectively. Thomas Rundle gave his Chairman’s Report on behalf of the Old Boys Association, and Mr Reeler reported back on the happenings of the School over the last year. One of the speeches that stood out, however, was that of Head Prefect Mashao Mukhari, a speech all Old Boys should listen to. It was filled with passion for the School, and inspiration for the future, and left goose bumps and a feeling of pride in all of those in attendance. It is clear, when listening to current boys of the School like Mashao, that our beloved School on the Hill continues to be a beacon of hope for education in South Africa, and that it truly is a place where we were not just taught, but where we learned to live.

We were honoured this year to have Robin Jackman, world famous cricketer and cricket commentator, as our guest speaker. Mr Jackman told many stories about his career in test cricket and even more about his career as a commentator, and spoke highly of his experiences of Boys High and the Old Boys with whom he had come into contact. He had the Old Boys in fits of laughter at stories which included riding a motor cycle in a foreign country to catch a flight that he was running late for after enjoying a drink at the pub with Trevor Quirk, and some interesting anecdotes about sharing a room with his fellow companions, which only the boarders seemed to understand.

The evening’s formalities ended with the singing of “40 Years On”, before the crowd made its way to the Old Boys Club for another “lemonade” or two.

The Association looks forward to welcoming all Old Boys to the 97th Annual Old Boys’ Dinner in 2016 in the new School hall.

“‘Tis there we learned to live. “

Text – Jason Webber | Photos Memos Kavallineas

GOLF DAY 2015

The Pretoria Boys High School Old Boys Association Golf Day was held at the Pretoria Country Club this year. The day was enjoyed by all and the dinner after golf was delightful. Herewith some photos of the day:

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PRETORIA BOYS HIGH SCHOOL NEWS

PBHS PIPE BAND GATHERING

On the 13th of June Pretoria Boys High School hosted their annual national Pipe Band gathering.
There were 30 bands who travelled from the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KZN and Zimbabwe to compete in the 2nd Championship for the year.

“We have had a glorious Highveld day”, the Headmaster, Mr. Tony Reeler said when he welcomed the guests at the end of the proceedings. It also was a glorious Highland day, with Pipes and Drums and Dancers from far and wide, gathering to celebrate a cultural heritage which is but a facet of the many sourced concepts of culture which make South Africa such a unique and privileged country to be living in.

There was a wonderfully congenial, happy atmosphere among participants and spectators and the different stalls catered for diverse requirements of an appreciative audience.

After handing trophies to the various winners, Mr. Reeler expressed the hope that the School would be able to host next year’s Gathering and wished everyone a safe journey home.

Congratulations to Mr. Rob Blackmore for arranging another memorable Boys High function.

Contributor & Photos: Trebot Barry

DESMOND ABERNETHY HALL UPDATE

Building Report: Week ending 20 June 2015

The floor of Room 27 (access route to site) has been levelled in preparation for rehabilitation.

The ground level in Hendry Quad has been compacted in preparation for paving and the terraces are nearing completion. The paving of the Memorial Quad has been completed.

Installation of articulated door in the East Wing has started, but there is a technical problem with the weight of this door and its effect on the cross beam from which it is suspended. A Structural engineer is being consulted to modify the cross beam and uprights.

Painting of all wall surfaces underway and ceiling panels have been installed in the gallery of the East Wing. Recesses on either side of the stage have been prepared for the two foundation stones.

Work is underway on the installation of the acoustic panels on the ground floor and the carpeting of the main gallery has been completed. Carpeting of the galleries in the two wings has started. The windows in the main gallery have been installed.

Work is underway on installing panelling in the passageway that runs beneath the main gallery and wood finishes on the underside of the wing galleries are being fitted.

Wood panelling on the front of the stage has been installed; scree surface on the upper entrances to the main gallery completed and balustrades on the gallery level are being installed.

Images & Text: PBHS

BOYS HIGH BOOKIE

– is a recent return to the Boys Highlights and we
hope that it will continue to entertain the boys as it has in previous years.

The odds that:
You will have homework from Mr Fielding. 4:5
You will have proper calves by the end of matric thanks to Polley Shorts. 1:1
You will sit in the shade during assembly. 1:3
You will get honours for academics. 2:1500
You complete your homework in the lesson before. 1:3
You will do House Runs if you’re under Form 4. 1:1
You will see a Form 1 doing a House ‘Walk’. 1:2
Actually working in PE this year: 1:3 (‘Tis getting serious okes)
The iPhone 6s being noticeably different from the iPhone 6. 1:1000
Last Year’s Boys Highlights team is better than this one. 1:200
A boarding house will win an Inter House event. 3:10
A day boy house will win an Inter House event. 7:10
A day boy getting tuned by a border about how short their house runs are. 1:1
The chances you beat Ryen van Wyk in any swimming event. 0:1
The chances you beat Edzani Kone in a foot race. 0:1
The chances you punch on King of the Mountain. 1:2
The chances you don’t get judged on what you’re wearing on civvies day. 1:1500
Mr de Kock will check your hair. 1:3
Mr Dumas brings up water polo in any conversation. 1:3
Mr Kelly will talk about Sportsmans Warehouse. 1:2
The chances you won’t get stuck in traffic at Mrs Albers’ classroom. 1:2
The chances Mr McBride will catch you that one time your shirt is untucked. 2:1
The chances you have half your day at Pollock and the other half at main. 1:1000
The chances you lend someone your hymnbook and you actually get it back. 1:1 000 000
The building project will be done on time. 1:6
Your teacher is absent. 1:100
Getting lates in Form 1. 5:1
The chances of a big bounce in the Boys High vs Affies Game. 2:1

– By Frederick Grobler (Article from Boys Highlights – Issue 23, May 2015)

OLD BOY NEWS

The first monthly Lunch Club for the Old Boys in Port Elizabeth was held on Friday, 19 June 2015 at the Arkenstone Guest House.

The Port Elizabeth Branch Convenor Mark Muttitt and Branch Secretary Vaughan Abernethy hope that these lunches become a regular occurrence (every 3rd Friday of the month) as is the case with the Lunch Club in Pretoria.

If any Old Boys would like to attend the next Port Elizabeth Lunch Club please email Vaughan Abernethy at shadower@global.co.za for more information.

Old Boys who attended the Port Elizabeth Lunch from Left to Right: Angus Gordon, 1962 (TOW); Vaughan Abernethy 1963 (TOW); Mark Muttitt, 1981 (SUN) and Ken Schmulow, 1971 (SOL) photographer.

Contributor & Photos: Ken Schmulow

MY SCHOOL CARD APPEAL

Support Pretoria Boys High School without it costing you a cent!

The PBHS Parents Association is launching a call to action for parents, grandparents, Old Boys and extended family of PBHS community to register for the “MySchool card”.

If you have extended family who don’t have children at a school, please ask them to register and make Pretoria Boys High School their beneficiary.

If you already have a card please ensure that PBHS is your beneficiary.

Register by visiting the website: www.myschool.co.za or by calling 0860 100 445 you can complete the application telephonically in under two minutes and your card will be posted to you.

If you have a Woolworths card make sure to link the two cards. Every Swipe Counts!

JAMES HALE MEMORIAL GOLF DAY 2015

The Rissik House / James Hale Memorial Golf Day will take place on 28 August 2015.

Venue: Zwartkop Country Club
Cost: R3600 per Fourball (Includes greenfees, halfway, prizegiving and dinner)

Various sponsorship opportunities – Show your support! Click here for more information.

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IN MEMORIAM

DEIRDRE HICKMAN 4/10/1936 – 25/05/2015

Mrs H was clear about one thing, the eulogy was going to have to be done by me, so I went to visit her earlier in the year and we talked about it all. There was one thing that you could not do with Mrs Hickman, and that was to say no to her, once she had made her will known, you had to agree. There was no other way.

It got me thinking, was that always how she was?

Deirdre Hickman lived a remarkable life, one that was certainly coloured by much more than Boys High, and when you got talking to her you quickly realised just how. Her father Alastair Edington was in some ways a frontier man and Deirdre inherited that from him. She was born in Shibane, a mining town in the then Rhodesia in 1936, and before 1981 lived a life so different from the one that awaited her in Pretoria. There were times in her life that adventure beckoned, coming to Pretoria alone and starting anew completely captured that frontier spirit.

Mrs H was part of the Rhodesian set and fondly remembered life in a different time. People forget that there were also happy times before it all become so clouded in what was to become the decline of Zimbabwe. I remember so well her telling me about going to Government House and seeing Ian Smith, there was a pride about it, and no doubt that she enjoyed her time there. Her husband, Michael, was in the army and together they had had two children, Angela and Peter.

But not all of it was happy and after Peter died tragically in a motorbike accident in 1980, and things in Zimbabwe looked to be changing, Mrs H went South. The loss of Peter was a trauma that in many ways never left her and deeply affected her.

She first told me about Peter when I was a young boy and mourning a tragic loss of my own. She sat me down in the sickbay and we just talked in the way that she would sometimes. Eventually she told me about her son, how it took her the longest time to deal with the loss, and how she sometimes felt that she did not entirely ever process it all. She admitted that it had been years before she came to terms with it. It was a side of Mrs H that you very seldom saw. At the end of the period, I got up to go, thanking her, she put a card in my hand with the words, ‘read this, it will make it a little easier. And don’t be afraid to cry.’

I need to just reflect on that moment for a bit, because later on in life I would better understand, Mrs H was on the robust end of the emotional spectrum. This is what you get from a Rugby coaching female member of staff, so for her to tell me about it was hard. But more, it explained the special place she had for so many boys in her heart, because I believe everyone of us, she treated as her own, and always would.

You see Mrs H was the most one-eyed (with apologies to Roger Herbert) of Boys High people. Once you got onto her good side you could do no wrong. She would look after you, nurse you when you were sick, feed you, give you her car, whatever needed to be done Mrs H was there. But mostly she saw the prevailing good and worked with that. And make no mistake it was not limited to Boys High, she had a way with young men and became a surrogate to so many.

It was in this role that Mrs H was the most comfortable. She was a natural born cheerleader, unendingly supportive spectator, and so often relentless worker in the background. When I first got to know Mrs H she was a true blue Bulls supporter, then Uli – one of her favourites and the apple of her eye – moved to Transvaal. The next season Mrs H was a red blooded Transvaal supporter, there was no question about the batting order of her loyalties, Uli first, Bulls second.

Who could forget the first fifteen scarves she would knit. Just when she had gotten them all done, the cricket season would beckon and she would turn to knitting pullovers. I even recall, despite the protestations – almost always in jest – from Angela, Mrs H washing all the first fifteen jerseys between games. This was solely so that they would retain their bright colours, and of course, it was a way for her to serve.

Deirdre loved the boys, but there was a really special place for the ones that played rugby, and next to Peter on the cabinet in Becket Place was Uli, Robbie Brink and John Smit. They gave her a joy so rare, and her unending pride in them and their individual achievements, filled the unfillable void left in the soul of a mother who’d lost a child.

I must just say one thing here, and I am sorry Uli for telling you now, but she did insist that your wife is the better doctor!

You see the thing about Mrs H was that she won you over with her generosity. She arrested you with her passion and enthusiasm. And once she did that, once you realised that she would be a lifelong friend, there is little you would not do for her.

Mrs Hickman arrived in Pretoria in 1981. The year after her son had died, and for all intents and purposes she started afresh. She taught at Loretto Convent for two years and was then saved from a move to Brakpan by Malcolm Armstrong who found her a berth at Boys High. She would always be very grateful to Mr Armstrong for that, but it did not stop her from telling somehow odd she found him. She found it hard to relate to the almost entirely intellectual Mr Armstrong and far preferred the
sporting men.

But you see as I write that I realise that it was not absolutely the case. She may have found it harder to relate to the academic types, but she did, and while you may never have graduated to a photo on the mantle, she was often as enthusiastic and more often than not, as supportive.

The arrival of Mr Schroder at Boys High signalled a new age for Mrs H. She enjoyed the renewed energy that went into sport, balancing out the differences perceived or real, and basked in being the first (and to the best of my knowledge) the only woman ever to attend the Rugby dinner. Mr Schroder was incredibly kind to Deirdre, recognising her singular attachment to Boys High, and when she could no longer teach, after a detached retina, he set her up to run the sickbay.

It was a very tough one for Mrs H, but it ushered in a whole new era of sick notes, generously disbursed. Hers was a safe haven from everyone but Mr Schroder himself, and she would protect to her death, your sniffling hide from a vengeful master certain of your truancy!

Imbedded in Mrs Hickman, it was part of her DNA, was her deep Catholicism. Her belief in the ultimate goodness of people, her belief in humanity and her generous spirit, were all encompassed by her faith. For this one can only but admire her.

But she was not without sin, if that is what it was, more accurately perhaps weakness. She could sometimes be petty, in rare instances if she disliked someone, cutting. She would argue, if you rose to a person’s defence, that it was true and deserved even if it was wrong to say so. I liked her for that.

Mrs H looked like a one person army, but she wasn’t, for all her time at Boys High and much beside there was the unyielding ever supportive Angela. If Uli trumped the Bulls then so often Boys High would trump Angela – and for this Angela you are a saint. Not because you so often came second, but because you supported your mum in everything that she did, and right to the end let her come first in everything. It is remarkable to me, and so many others, that you have such a generosity of spirit. Because of you, because of your ever present support, and more often than not hard work, she became the mother to so many of us. We owe you the greatest debt of gratitude and will forever be thankful to you.

It is twenty years or so since Deirdre handed me that card in sickbay. This morning when I looked at it I realised that every inch of it is committed to memory, and no matter where I go in the world, it, like her, will always be with me.

Mrs H gave so much to so many, her memory fills so much of who I became, of who so many of us are. I will always love her for who and what she was, and the words on that card, now solemnly appropriate:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

– Eugene Ashton

PETER LLEWELLYN CORBETT

Born Vryburg, Cape Province 24.8.1940. Died Amanzimtoti, KwaZulu-Natal 23.5.2015 aged 74.

Peter, like his elder brother John (born Bloemfontein 10.1.1938 died Pretoria 17.10.2010) who made 43 first-class appearances 1958/59-1966/67, was educated at Pretoria Boys High School (PBHS). A lot of games that Peter played in were alongside his brother. In cricket, Peter, a right-hand batsman, went in at number three and John opened the batting. In hockey, Peter played centre forward and John played left inner. Both were highly competitive and Peter had fond memories of the verbal sporting banter between them. Peter maintained his own sporting achievements would not have happened without the assistance of John which went right back to their early cricket games in the backyard where each game was treated like a World Cup Final. In first-class cricket they played on the same side on 25 occasions (24 times for North-Eastern Transvaal and once for a Combined GW/NE Tvl/OFS XI).

He played for North-Eastern Transvaal Schools in the 1958 (East London) and 1959 (Pietermaritzburg) Nuffield Weeks. In the latter Week he scored 329 runs (avg 109.66) which included 103 not out against Orange Free State and 99 against Griqualand West. He was ‘quite the best batsman on view. His stoke play is good, his concentration excellent and his aggressive attitude should bring him higher recognition in the future.’ He batted at number three for the SA Schools XI, against a Natal XI, at the end of the Week. PBHS became one of only three Schools, at that time, to have three players in the SA Schools team with Neville Holmes and Alan Hector also being selected.

Peter first appeared in Pretoria First League cricket at the age of sixteen and also played for PBHS Old Boys on a number of occasions including a match, when aged 45, on 19 October 1985 as part of the Schools 75th Anniversary celebrations.

After leaving PBHS, Peter continued to excel as an all-round sportsman also playing tennis, rugby and hockey. At hockey he gained provincial colours and later represented South Africa between 1963 and 1966 which included the tour to England and Europe in 1964.

– Robin Isherwood

ERIC THOMAS SHORNEY HUGHES

Eric was born and grew up in Pretoria. He attended the Sunnyside Primary School and matriculated at Pretoria Boys’ High School in 1955. He obtained a Degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Natal, worked for the Municipalities of Springs and later Durban before immigrating to Perth, Australia about 33 years ago.

He married Ilona Steinman in 1963. They had one son, John. Eric worked for the West Australia Water Authority until he retired and thereafter on a contract basis until a couple of years ago. He and his wife planned to travel and go on cruises during his retirement years, and it was prior to one of these trips that he collapsed at Perth Airport and passed away three days later on 26 May 2015 from a massive stroke, shortly after his 76th birthday.

– Phyllis Matthew (Sister)

UPCOMING OLD BOY EVENTS

• 21 & 22 August 2015
  30 YEAR ON 2015
• 11 & 12 September 2015
  50 YEAR ON 2015
• 18 September 2015
  9TH ANNUAL EASTERN CAPE (PE) DINNER

If you have any interesting news items and photos or just want to let your fellow Old Boys know what you have been up to after school, please send all information to info@pbhsob.com