A Tribute to Neal “ STORK “ Halford 30 Aug 1950 to 3rd Jan 2022
Submitted by Bobby Armour
Sadly Neall Halford known as “STORK “ passed away on 3rd January 2022 at the age of 71 after a brave fight against cancer. He leaves behind his beautiful wife Beryl and their two beautiful daughters Jackie and Natalie.
He was nicknamed Stork because of his long legs which made him excel at X- country.
Stork was very popular and well liked by his fellow scholars. He was always smiling and always the same. He was a very generous and humble person. I don’t think I ever saw Stork cross.
I, Bobby Armour, was his best friend and we were in School House together (1964-1968 ). We spent many a weekend at his Dad’s vegetable farm in Pyramid, north of Pretoria. We loved going there as his dad always had a good supply of Black Label beer for us.
One of the many naughty things we did together at school was leaving School House at about 4.30am on a Saturday morning and nicking a few bottles of milk and orange juice from some of the neighbours. We would then get “Mouse” Farquharson and “Fred“ Harworth, who were good fishermen, to come up to the koppie with myself and Stork. A certain lady lived in a house next to the koppie and we noticed that she had free-range chickens in her yard. So Fred would rig up a fishing line with a mealie attached to the end and Mouse would cast it over the precast wall . As soon as the first chicken swallowed the mealie, he would whip it over the wall and then the chase began to catch the chicken. Stork with X- country ability usually caught the chicken. We would then proceed to have the best lunch ever consisting of braaied chicken, orange juice and milk.
May you rest in peace my mate till we meet again.
