Mike's Memoirs
I was born in England during the Second World War, though both of my parents were South African by birth. My father had been born in Pretoria and my mother in Bloemfontein. Before the war they had travelled to England aboard the Llangibby Castle so they could further their studies. My mother studied music at the Royal Academy of Music and completed her LRAM, while my father studied metallurgy.
My father eventually became chief metallurgist for a large engineering company called Acton Bolt. During the war the company was heavily involved in manufacturing munitions, and my father became deeply immersed in that work. He was a brilliant metallurgist and did important research into high-tensile steels and specialised metals used in wartime aircraft and equipment. Some of the bolts and steel components he helped develop were later used in Spitfires and other aircraft. For his services during the war he was awarded an MBE.
As a child, though, I knew none of that larger significance. What I knew was wartime England.
We lived in Hatch End near Pinner, not far from Harrow, on the outskirts of London. I can still remember the strange glow in the sky during the Blitz — the orange-red light hanging over London as bombs fell in the distance. I must have only been four or five years old, but those memories are still vivid. We wore gas masks. At school we were taught how to use them and how to rush into underground shelters during air raids. I had just started school at Grimsdyke Grammar School in Pinner.
At that age I had no understanding of Hitler, invasions, or geopolitics. I only knew that adults were anxious and that we children were constantly being prepared for danger. Looking back now, I realise how close England felt to catastrophe during those years.
One of my earliest and strongest memories came after a childhood accident. I was rolling a snowball in the street one day when I picked up a shard of broken glass hidden beneath the snow. Our milkman apparently used to throw broken bottles into the road. I badly injured one of my fingers and was taken to hospital.
There were no proper facilities for children, so they placed me in a ward full of wounded soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk. Oddly enough, it became one of the warmest memories of my childhood. Those men adored having a child in the ward. They wheeled me around in their wheelchairs, gave me bits of chocolate — an enormous luxury during wartime — and treated me like a mascot. I can still remember the kindness of those wounded soldiers.
After the war my father was selected to establish a South African branch of the engineering business. His boss in England, Tom Parker, thought highly of him and believed he was the ideal person for the task because he was South African-born and technically brilliant.
My father left ahead of us for Johannesburg to establish the factory. My mother, my baby sister Elaine, and I followed later aboard the Carnarvon Castle. By then the ship had been converted from wartime service back into a passenger vessel.
Even on that voyage my curiosity got the better of me. I became fascinated by the ship and befriended the engineers and crew members. I spent so much time exploring the engine rooms and learning how the machinery worked that when we reached Cape Town they struggled to find me so I could disembark.
I have always been intensely curious about how things work.
When we arrived in Cape Town it was the first time I met many of my relatives. During the war years communication had been extremely difficult. I remember my mother once waiting days for a phone line to connect so she could speak to her father in South Africa for the first time in years.
My maternal grandfather, Robert Lee, was a remarkable man. Originally from London, he had emigrated to South Africa as a boy and eventually established a successful construction company called Robert Lee & Sons. He had worked as a carpenter and restorer before moving into building and construction. By the time I knew him he had built many important structures around Cape Town and had strong ties to places like Rondebosch and Lakeside.
There were even roads and houses connected to the family name. Lee Road in Rondebosch was linked to property he had developed, including a house called Sandhurst. He had also been involved in early school buildings connected to what later became Rondebosch Girls’ School.
My grandparents lived in Lakeside in a beautiful home called Lee’s Home. Because my father was working in Johannesburg establishing the new factory, my mother, sister and I stayed with them for quite some time.
Those Cape Town years were magical.
My grandfather owned one of the old bathing huts at Muizenberg beach where surfboards and beach equipment were stored. My uncles taught me to surf there. We would spend entire days at the beach, often buying huge watermelons and eating them together on the sand after surfing. The sea became deeply woven into me from those years onward.
I attended St George’s Grammar School as a weekly boarder, staying at Bloemendal boarding house during the week and returning to my grandparents on weekends.
The area around the school was still quite rural then. We climbed trees endlessly and invented dangerous games that no modern school would ever allow. One involved swinging from tree to tree like monkeys before leaping to the ground. Another involved a strange game called kineki, where you flipped sticks into the air with another stick — a wonderful way to blind someone if things went wrong.
But nobody worried much about safety in those days. It was just after the war. Boys were expected to be adventurous.
Nearby there was a rugby field used by coloured rugby teams. Their matches were ferocious affairs. Fights constantly broke out and ambulances stood ready beside the field. We watched them in fascination from behind the fence.
Eventually we moved to Johannesburg to join my father.
At first we stayed in rented rooms in Kensington while my parents established themselves. Later my parents bought a five-acre smallholding in Benoni. That property shaped much of my childhood.
We had chickens, sheep, orchards, dogs, and horses. My mother kept a horse and grew fruit which she packed into little punnets and sold at the local markets. I often went with her.
The area around us was still deeply rural. There were farms and market gardens stretching between Benoni and Johannesburg. Jan Smuts Airport did not yet exist — the land where it would later stand was farmland.
My father’s factory in Boksburg North fascinated me endlessly.
It was enormous. Trains ran directly into the grounds on private railway lines so materials could be loaded and transported. My father had brought several highly skilled British families out with him — specialists in engineering and metallurgy who formed the core management of the factory.
My father believed firmly that children should earn their pocket money. If I wanted money, I had to work for it.
So as a boy I worked in the factory during holidays and weekends. I worked in the metallurgy lab, the workshops, the stores, and the railway loading yards. I learned how to use lathes and machinery. I worked alongside boilermakers, fitters, turners, cabinet makers and engineers.
At the end of each week I received my wages in a little brown paper packet.
I loved it.
Although many people later assumed I would become an engineer, my deepest attraction was increasingly toward farming and the countryside.
Life on the Benoni smallholding strengthened that feeling. We had wonderful dogs — a pointer, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, and my beloved Rex, a cross between an Alsatian and a retriever.
I also remember one terrifying storm. Long before it arrived, all the animals crowded nervously into the house. The dogs and cats hid beneath tables and refused to leave. They sensed the storm coming long before we did. Eventually massive trees were torn down around the property.
I became deeply involved in sport during my school years.
At St Dunstan’s School in Benoni I played cricket, football and swam competitively. The school followed the English model closely. I became head of house and threw myself into school life. Elaine attended the same school years behind me.
Swimming became one of my great passions. I trained intensely and eventually became deeply involved in lifesaving. Later I became the first schoolboy in South Africa to qualify as a full examiner for the Royal Life Saving Society.
Another lifelong passion began in those years: collecting.
It started during wartime England with matchbox covers and cigarette cards. Cigarette packets often contained collectible cards featuring ships, aircraft or trains. Boys traded them obsessively.
Eventually stamps took over my imagination.
When we arrived in South Africa my grandfather showed me a huge box filled with old stamps from letters sent during the war. He also owned a magnificent stamp album containing Cape Triangulars and rare old issues collected by him and my uncles.
That ignited something in me permanently.
After prep school I attended Glenwood High School in Durban as a full boarder.
I adapted well to boarding life. Sport dominated much of my existence there — rugby, swimming, lifesaving and cadet band activities. I became a bugler in the school cadet band and we competed at an extremely high standard under military instructors.
Swimming remained central to my life. I trained constantly and became captain of my house swimming team.
When I left school I decided I wanted to become a farmer.
Before agricultural college I worked for a wealthy farmer in the Lowveld who owned thirteen farms. That year became one of the great practical educations of my life.
I worked with tropical fruits, cattle ranching, tractors, dam building and machinery maintenance. Eventually I spent long periods on an enormous cattle ranch in the mountains near the Mozambique border — a vast property of some 35,000 morgen.
We herded thousands of cattle across immense distances. I learned to ride horses properly while driving cattle toward plunge dips for tick treatment. I repaired fences, maintained equipment and worked alongside hardened old farmers who understood animals instinctively.
One of the managers, Oom Piet, lived in extraordinarily primitive conditions with his family. I eventually built them a proper kitchen counter and eating area because their living conditions disturbed me.
During that year I briefly became caught up with an intensely religious farming family and wrote a long, earnest letter trying to convert my father.
He wisely concluded I needed broader horizons.
So he arranged for me to join an expedition travelling through Africa into the Congo.
That journey changed me forever.
We travelled by Land Rover through Rhodesia, the Congo, Uganda and Kenya over nearly three months.
We climbed volcanoes near Lake Kivu where lava still flowed from side vents. We walked across old lava fields that cracked beneath our feet like eggshells.
We entered the Ituri Forest and spent time with pygmy hunters. A Brazilian anthropologist who had lived among them for years introduced us to their communities. We watched them hunt using beautifully crafted poisoned arrows.
We climbed high into the Rwenzori Mountains with porters carrying our supplies. We crossed elephant paths and moved through forests of giant bamboo and enormous tree ferns unlike anything I had ever seen.
Roads in the Congo were terrifyingly primitive. Some mountain routes allowed only one-way traffic controlled by men communicating with drums from opposite ends of dangerous passes. Trucks occasionally plunged off the mountainsides.
It was wild, dangerous and unforgettable.
Afterwards I attended Cedara Agricultural College in Natal where I studied animal husbandry and practical farming over two years.
We learned everything — dairying, forestry, blacksmithing, veterinary basics, machinery maintenance, crop management and farm economics. We even operated our own student-run farm.
I loved it completely.
But after my father died, the dream of owning a farm together collapsed.
Eventually I drifted toward dentistry after aptitude testing suggested it suited me.
I entered Wits University and began six gruelling years of dental training.
At Wits University I found myself surrounded by extraordinarily bright students. Many of them had achieved brilliant academic results at school, and I often felt I had arrived there by a more unusual route — through farms, cattle ranches, workshops and agricultural colleges rather than through pure academic excellence.
I had entered dentistry almost accidentally, but once I was there I committed myself fully to it.
The course was immensely demanding. In the early years we studied zoology, botany, chemistry and physics before moving into anatomy, physiology, pathology and microbiology alongside the medical students. Under Professor Phillip Tobias we dissected cadavers from head to toe. The dental students were expected to meet exactly the same anatomical standards as the medical students.
By third and fourth year we moved increasingly into clinical work. We learned prosthetics, restorative dentistry and surgery. Patients came into the university hospital for treatment at reduced fees, and every piece of work we did was rigorously inspected and assessed.
Wits had one of the finest dental schools in the world at that time. Our qualification was internationally respected and recognised across Europe, America and elsewhere. The standards were extremely high.
University life, however, was not only work.
There was tremendous camaraderie among the students. I became involved in student activities and eventually served on the Student Dental Council for several years. Sport continued to play a major role in my life. I played rugby, cricket and water polo, mostly at second-team level, and rowed in coxed fours for a time as well.
It was during these years that I met Heather.
The beginning of our relationship happened almost by accident.
I had initially been seeing one of her friends, Shane Rourke, whose family knew my father from Pretoria days. One evening there was a social function in Pretoria at Shane’s family home, but Shane could not attend and sent Heather in her place.
That turned out to be the end of my relationship with Shane before it had even properly begun.
I remember Heather and I sitting together afterwards at a little bus shelter outside the house, talking for hours and discovering an immediate connection between us.
Heather was beautiful, intelligent and composed. She was studying teaching at the Teachers’ Training College and already showed the qualities that would later define her life. She was a natural leader and eventually became head girl of her residence. Teaching was not simply a job to her — it was a calling.
From then on we became inseparable.
Those years were full of dances, university balls, road trips and adventures with friends. Heather had a magnificent red evening dress that she wore to dances, and in those days university social life was vibrant and glamorous.
We spent holidays travelling whenever we could. Sometimes we visited my uncle’s farm in the Drakensberg with groups of friends. At other times we headed north toward Mozambique.
One of my closest friends from university days was Carl Coorsman, whose father owned the Coorsman Ice Cream business in Benoni. Carl had a Land Rover, and during vacations the three of us — Carl, Heather and I — would head up the Mozambique coast camping along remote beaches.
Those were wonderful days.
We camped in places like Inhambane and Xai-Xai, cooking over small stoves beneath makeshift awnings. Heather was wonderfully practical and domestic in camp life. She would organise our food and little kitchen area while Carl and I fished.
The Mozambique coastline in those days was still largely untouched. We fished, swam and explored empty beaches that seemed to stretch forever.
As our relationship deepened, Heather and I eventually decided to marry while I was still in my final year of dentistry.
Looking back, it seems astonishing now. I was still a student and had not yet qualified, but in those days people moved into adulthood earlier and more decisively than they often do now.
Heather had already begun teaching by then. She taught at a school in Hyde Park in Johannesburg — the same school she herself had attended as a girl. She later specialised further in remedial education.
Around that time we also travelled with her school headmaster on a holiday through Mozambique. We fished extensively and explored the coastline together. Those years before responsibility fully descended upon us were some of the freest and happiest of my life.
During university I also became closer friends with your father.
We had known each other through the dental faculty, but we became properly acquainted through the boarding house where many of us students took our meals. An old woman ran the place and for a modest fee we could eat there daily.
That was where friendships deepened.
Your father was highly regarded among us. He was quieter and less sporty than some of us because he had suffered from rheumatic fever and could not throw himself physically into things in the same way. But he was deeply intelligent and very well liked.
Even in those days he was fascinated by engineering and model engines. We often joked that he should have become an engineer rather than a dentist.
After graduating, I worked briefly at the Johannesburg Children’s Hospital as a dentist. Interestingly, several older dentists there were passionate stamp collectors, and I remember lunchtime conversations about rare stamps and dealers.
Not long afterwards, Heather and I decided to go to England.
Like many young South Africans of that generation, we wanted to experience life abroad before settling down permanently.
We flew to England aboard one of the old Lockheed Constellation aircraft operated by Trek Airways. Those planes were extraordinary things — when turbulence hit, the wings seemed almost to flap.
During the flight one of the engines began shooting flames from the exhaust. Heather was sitting by the window and became absolutely terrified. I eventually had to pull down the window blind and move her away from the sight of it.
When we arrived in Europe there was such heavy snow in London that we could not land at Heathrow and were diverted to Brussels instead.
We were freezing cold and exhausted, so we found a nearby pub and drank generous quantities of Dubonnet to warm ourselves.
Another dental friend, Gerald McKay, travelled with us.
Eventually we reached London and found accommodation in Earl’s Court, where many South Africans initially settled.
I quickly discovered that several former Wits graduates already practising in England were eager to employ fellow graduates because of the excellent reputation of the dental school. I soon secured a position in a dental practice in Hounslow West.
Heather easily found teaching work.
Those first months in London were exciting. South Africa did not yet have television, so one of the first things I did in our hotel room was order a black-and-white television set to be brought upstairs so we could experience this marvel properly.
We spent our early weeks buying essentials for our new life — linen, crockery, blankets and household goods from London department stores.
The house where we eventually lived was attached directly to the dental practice where I worked. The surgery occupied the ground floor, while our living quarters were upstairs. Behind the house was one of those long narrow English gardens stretching down toward a garage at the back.
At first I bought a small Austin from the previous owner, but before long I had saved enough money to buy something better.
I desperately wanted a Jaguar.
At the Earl’s Court Motor Show I saw the new XJ6 models and became determined to own one. I marched into the Jaguar dealership in London prepared to pay cash, but the salesman treated me with astonishing arrogance and informed me coldly that there was a waiting list.
I walked out furious.
Across the road I entered a BMW dealership instead and received completely different treatment. They were welcoming, enthusiastic and helpful.
That day I ordered my first BMW — a beautiful new 2500 model.
The car arrived at almost exactly the same time as our daughter Kim was born.
Kim’s birth was extremely difficult for Heather. She endured nearly twenty-four hours of labour in a maternity ward crowded with noisy women from Southall. It was an exhausting and traumatic experience for her.
Still, when Kim finally arrived safely, we were overjoyed.
Life in England settled into a rhythm.
We travelled constantly whenever possible. I became very confident driving in London and often collected newly arrived South Africans from Heathrow, taking them on informal tours through the city before dropping them at their destinations.
Heather and I also travelled extensively through Europe.
Because foreign currency restrictions were severe at the time, we travelled cheaply and creatively. We converted a panel van into a makeshift camper using camp stretchers, a little stove and a homemade awning attached to the rear doors.
For weeks we wandered across Europe staying in campsites recommended in camping guides.
One unforgettable journey took us high into the Swiss Alps to visit an enormous ice cave called the Eisriesenwelt after Heather’s aunt strongly recommended it.
By then Heather was heavily pregnant, yet we still climbed by cable cars and mountain paths high into the freezing alpine caves.
The local Europeans were horrified that I had brought my pregnant wife so high into the mountains.
But that was how we lived then — adventurously and perhaps sometimes foolishly.
We also discovered the Playboy Club in London through an old family acquaintance. Oddly enough, membership was inexpensive if one gambled a little, and once I won enough money playing roulette to pay for a full year’s membership.
The meals there were extraordinarily cheap for members, so Heather and I often went there simply for steak dinners while carefully ignoring the gambling.
After just over two years in England we decided to return to South Africa.
By then we had accumulated not only furniture and antiques but also an entire dental surgery worth of equipment which I purchased in England because it was vastly cheaper there.
We packed everything — the furniture, the dental equipment, the BMW and our young daughter — and sailed home aboard the Carnarvon Castle.
Returning to South Africa after England marked the beginning of an entirely new chapter of life.
We arrived back in Cape Town aboard the Carnarvon Castle, bringing with us our daughter Kim, a full dental surgery worth of equipment, a shipment of antique furniture, and my BMW, which I had purchased in England.
During my time in London I had bought a large quantity of professional dental equipment. Much of it came from Ash, one of the finest manufacturers of dental instruments at the time. I returned with extraction forceps, surgical instruments, restorative equipment and enough material to fully furnish a consulting room. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I made professionally.
Initially, through family contacts, I almost joined a dental practice in Rondebosch. I met the dentist involved and considered the offer seriously, but something about it simply did not feel right to me. Instinctively I knew I would not be happy there, so I declined the opportunity.
Soon afterwards my old university friend Francois contacted me. We had known each other from Wits and through intervarsity activities. One of the partners in his dental practice in Wynberg was leaving, and there was an opening available.
That opportunity proved decisive.
Because I already possessed a complete set of dental equipment from England, I was able to buy into the practice almost immediately. I could equip an entire surgery myself, which gave me a considerable advantage as a young dentist starting out.
So in 1970 I joined the practice in Wynberg.
At the time I had no idea that it would become such a central part of my life for decades to come.
Those early professional years were busy and demanding, but I found that dentistry suited me far better than I had once imagined.
Although I had originally dreamed of becoming a farmer, dentistry appealed to many of the same instincts in me. It required precision, patience, practical skill and attention to detail. Looking back, I think all the years spent working in my father’s factory workshops, repairing farm equipment, learning practical skills on farms, and handling tools from a young age had prepared me well for that kind of work.
I enjoyed working with my hands.
I enjoyed craftsmanship.
And dentistry, at its best, is a form of craftsmanship.
At the same time, Heather was building her own professional life in education.
Teaching was never simply a job for her — it was something she cared about deeply. Even as a young woman she had shown strong leadership qualities. She had been head girl at school and later became head woman of her residence while studying teaching.
She was devoted to children and education in a very genuine way.
Part of that influence came from her aunt Helen, who had played a significant role in education in Johannesburg and helped establish part of the prep school at St Cyprian’s. Helen was highly respected in educational circles, and Heather inherited much of that same passion and commitment.
Not long after our return to South Africa we experienced the loss of a child late in pregnancy, which was naturally a very difficult period for both of us.
In those days people often dealt with such things very differently from the way they would today. There was far less emotional support or understanding surrounding grief and loss, and people were often encouraged simply to move on quietly and continue with life.
The experience affected Heather deeply, and in many ways it shaped the course of our family life afterwards.
Despite the demands of work and family life, I continued developing many of the interests that had followed me since childhood.
My fascination with collecting deepened steadily over the years.
What had begun as collecting cigarette cards and stamps as a boy gradually evolved into a love of antiques, furniture and beautifully crafted objects.
Much of this had been influenced by our time in England. While living there, Heather and I had spent considerable time with her relative Jim in Taunton, who was both an antique dealer and an exceptionally skilled cabinet maker. Under his guidance we began acquiring carefully chosen antique pieces.
For me, the attraction was never simply ownership.
What fascinated me was workmanship.
I loved the quality of old craftsmanship — the joinery in antique furniture, the richness of old wood, the proportions and elegance of well-made pieces. There was something deeply satisfying about objects created carefully by skilled hands.
Perhaps that appreciation came partly from my grandfather’s background in carpentry and construction, and partly from growing up around engineering workshops and machinery through my father’s factory.
Whatever its origins, it remained with me throughout my life.
During these years I also stayed close to many of my university friends.
Your father remained one of those enduring friendships.
Dentistry created strong bonds between us because the training at Wits had been so demanding and intense. We had gone through years of anatomy dissections, clinical work, examinations and long hours together.
The dental faculty itself was relatively small, so everyone knew each other well.
I still remember your father working on my teeth while we were students at the dental hospital. Some of that work lasted decades afterwards, which said something about the quality of the training we received.
Wits dentistry had an international reputation at the time and maintained extremely high standards. We were trained rigorously and expected to perform at a very high level clinically and academically.
Outside academics there had also been a rich social life.
There were dances, interfaculty sports competitions, university events and endless gatherings involving students from the teachers’ training colleges and university residences.
Your father was quieter than some of us socially, but highly respected and well liked. Because of his rheumatic fever he had not been able to participate heavily in sport, but intellectually he was deeply admired.
Even then he was fascinated by engineering and model engines. Many of us felt he might easily have become an engineer rather than a dentist.
Looking back now, it amazes me how much life seemed to happen in such a short span of years.
By the time I was still a relatively young man I had already lived through wartime England, travelled across Africa into the Congo, worked on vast cattle ranches, studied agriculture, trained as a dentist, married, lived in London, travelled through Europe, become a father, and established a professional life back in South Africa.
Life moved quickly in those days.
People married younger, responsibilities arrived earlier, and adulthood seemed to come fast.
Yet all those experiences remained connected within me — the child watching the skies burn red over London during the Blitz, the young man riding horseback across Lowveld cattle farms, the student dancing with Heather at university balls, the traveller crossing Africa in a Land Rover, and the dentist beginning to build a life and practice in Wynberg.
All of them were part of the same journey.
