Patrick Marktotter, Kevin Robins and Dale Jackson
I was lucky,
after being given the boot from the Star by Iqbal Survé, to get a number of
gigs that allowed me to continue doing what I love – asking people about the
things they do, and writing them up.
The best of
those assignments , because it allowed me mingle again with the remarkable men
and women who work in a school, has been being taken on, for two days a week, to
write things for the communications channels of Jeppe High School for Boys.
My role has
grown and I now also do work for the school’s old boys organisation, the Jeppe
Boys Association. I share an office with Kevin Robins, a retired engineer who
in, his soul, is actually a historian. His job is to oversee the engineering
and construction projects around the school, but he also manages the JBA, and
has an amazing knowledge of the school’s history, and what the old boys are up
to. Ask him a question, and if he can’t answer it immediately, he’ll find what
you want in one of his data bases.
It was him who
first told me about Patrick Mark Markotter, an elderly man who had attended the
school for two years, 1949 and 1950, and who went on to live quite a remarkable
life.
We managed,
through Patrick’s niece, Cherise Nel, to set up a day for him to visit the
school. He had some framed items, she told us, that he wanted to donate to the
school and had in recent times expressed the wish to see the school again
before he died. He was suffering with cancer, so it was quite urgent.
We got it all
together, and on Monday 6th June he was brought to Jeppe by his son, accompanied
by his grandson, the pastor of the church he attended in Randfontein, and
several other family members.
It was the first
time he had gotten off his bed for several months, he told us, and the day
began with an amazing reversal of roles. “My son woke me up and hassled me to
get ready for school, just as I had done to him all those years ago,” he said.
It was the first
of a series of events that, according to Patrick, provided a closure for him
and has left him satisfied and ready to go when the time comes.
The framed items
he brought included a pair of boxing gloves – he retired unbeaten as a
professional lightweight fighter – a pair of dungarees that he wore as a
locomotive driver in the gold mines, and his nine Red Seal certificates. Red
seals were awarded to master tradesmen and they required the completion of a
trade qualification, followed by at least five years of practical experience.
Patrick did that in nine trades associated with the mining industry. The items
will go into the collection of the Jeppe Museum.
He left Jeppe at
the end of grade 9 because his family needed him to get a job, So he went to the
mines, and stayed there for the next 40 years.
Why the
connection with Jeppe I wondered, seeing he had only been here for two years?
He told us that morning in the old boys offices before he handed the items over
to Dale Jackson, the Jeppe headmaster.
In standard six
(grade 8) he was made to take Latin as a
subject and had no interest or aptitude for it. He got 11% for Latin in the
March exams and was destined to fail it. Then his Latin teacher, a Madam Davies
(she insisted that she was Madam, not Miss), noticed him and changed his life.
“It came about through classical music,” he explained. “One day, she called for
40 boys to accompany her to a chamber music performance at the City Hall, and I
put my name down.”
“Most of the
boys only went to get a night out of the hostel, but I was fascinated.
Afterwards she asked us each to write an essay on what we thought of it. She
threw 39 of them in the bin, but kept mine. I had written that the music I
heard described the composer’s life. It had ups and downs, happy periods and
sad ones, light moments and serious ones. Madam Davies read it out aloud and
told me that, while I had no interest in Latin, I clearly had a love for music.”
Then she gave him
extra lessons and he eventually passed Latin at the end of the year. “She could
have discarded me as a failure, but she saw me as a human being and took an
interest in me, that was something I never forgot.”
And it kindled a
love for classical music that has lasted all his life. “I bought my first
classical record at a bicycle shop in Troyeville soon afterwards and it became
the first in a collection that became the biggest in the country, eventually taking
over my whole house."
Patrick also told us that the
Jeppe motto, Forti Nihil Difficilius, was something
that stayed with him all his life. “History has shown us that nothing really is
too difficult for the brave, and I have tried to live my life that way. Jeppe
gave me that solid foundation and I will always be grateful.”
That’s what got
him through the process of getting those nine red seals. He also, via the
National Technical Certificate route, finally got the equivalent of a matric,
at the age of 43.
It was an
inspirational morning. Patrick told us that visiting the school again had long
been on his bucket list and that, despite his ill health and advanced age he
was happy that he had ticked that box.
Patrick Markotter’s story will stand out, I think, among the hundreds I have recounted down the years.
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