2009 REUNION MATRICS OF 1969
8th December 2009:
At last, a report (from Bertie Bezuidenhout):
Originally, the date for our fortieth was set for the weekend of the 19th of December 2009, but several important decisions made us change the date to the weekend of the 25-27 September 2009. One of these decisions was taken one Friday evening at the Cape Town International Airport when I was on my way back to Johannesburg. We, Alwyn, George, Roy, Susan and I met to do a bit of advanced planning. During the discussions, we decided to invite everyone whom we met and/or knew during our school years. That meant that we would invite everyone from those who were in matric in 1965 – the year that we were in standard 6 – to those who were in standard 6 in 1969.
Around April this year, we changed the date due to the fact that far too many people told us that they would be visiting family or friends during the festive season – Magda suggested the dates in September because inland and coastal schools had the same holiday period. The final arrangements was that 69’ class mates would meet on Friday the 25th of September for a sit-down dinner and everyone who went to school at JJ du Preez would attend the spit-braai function on Saturday afternoon/evening the 26th of September.
My wife and I arrived a few days before the event in order to help with the final arrangements. As I got off the plane, I received yet another phone call from someone asking about the arrangements because he also wanted to attend the function.
On Friday, around 19:00 people started arriving for the function. One of the first people to arrive was Dora, who drove “down” from Nelspruit. Other great surprises were the arrival of Ben and his wife from the USA and Roy, who still underwent chemo therapy the day before. Many of our old school friends really made great efforts to get together for the weekend and one could see and experience the great enjoyment during the evening, this despite a major power failure that occurred just before we were meant to have the main dinner. The power failure of almost two hours did not deter anyone from having a great time.
The Friday evening’s function was very special to all of us who attended. It was precisely 40 years after our matric farewell function, Thursday the 25th of September 1969. When I announced this, everyone was even more excited and thankful for the fact that we could do that. In his prayer, George thanked God for the opportunity to be able to spent time together after forty years.
Thanks to Estelle, we could enjoy some of the best wines with our meal. She donated 10 crates of KWV wines for the weekend. George arranged with a friend, who owns (or something like that) a security company, to ensure that our cars were safe while we were having fun. Leslo did not only arrange for the school hall to be made available, but he helped during the cleaning of the hall after the event.
On Saturday, around 13:00, many of us congregated at the old JJ du Preez school building – now called the Northlink College, Parow Campus – to take a walk through memory lane. My wife recorded a large number of tales on video. Because of space constraints, I was unable to use all of it, but I have put many of the “better” ones on DVD. It was one of the truly amazing events of the weekend.
When I arrived at Parow High School around 14:00, where the weekend’s functions took place, there were already quite a few people, this despite the “arrangements” that we would get together from 15:00 onwards. To me, it was a sign that everyone wanted to spend time with their old school mates of years gone by. Wow, it was so great to see the enjoyment on everyone faces. Apart from the '69 matrics, the second largest group was the '65 matrics.
Everyone enjoyed Mr Piet van der Westhuizen’s speech – in full on the DVD. He and his wife had a great time, and so did everyone else.
After dinner, I put on a video that I made – which was projected on one of the walls. It contained several class photos. When the first one was shown, several people got up to have a closer look. At that point, I suggested that, as the class photo is shown on the wall, matrics from that year should come forward for class photo. Unfortunately, the timing of the display of the photos was faster than getting everyone together for the photos, so I stopped the programme and called on people from the specific years to come forward for a group photos.
I decided to call everyone from a particular year to come forward for the group photo, whether they were at JJ du Preez or Pietersburg in that particular year. That caused great fun. Some “groups” were small – one only – while others were fairly large. A suggestion was made that we take a photo of everyone who went to school at Tiervlei Laerskool; and the Parow Laerskool. Then, we took a photo of everyone who lived in Tiervlei – this was by far the largest group. All of these photos plus the video clips of the fun in doing this are on the DVD.
On Sunday morning, a large number of us went to the old Tiervlei – now Parowvallei – Moedergemeente NG Kerk for a service by Abraham Thiersen. It was a wonderful service & sermon delivered by one of our own. Afterwards, we were served coffee / tea where I thanked Abraham for making time available to do the service.
Not long after I arrived back home, I was asked when are we going to have our next get-together, which just shows me that everyone had great fun and enjoyed each other’s company!!!
(format is mm/dd/yyyy)