An Old Boy's Legacy: Mr Don McKenzie.

An Old Boy's Legacy: Mr Don McKenzie. This is a short history that will be edited and placed into the History book under the Old Boys' section.

Jean Gurr (Don McKenzie’s sister) put me onto Maureen Robert (his niece) who faxed me the following information as taken from the Highway Mail. See below feedback from Maureen Robert, unfortunately the photographs were faxed. These will be updated in due course.

THEY LIVED IN THE OUTER WEST

Don McKenzie of Toch by Robin Lamplough

What kind of man gives up a good job in business to live in a rondavel on the edge of the Valley of 1000 Hills and care for sick people? Perhaps he would be the same sort of man who every afternoon visited a polio-stricken nephew and then wrote to the wife of F.D. Roosevelt, who husband was anther polio victim for advice. He was the type of man who left among his personal papers a notebook that reveals his strong religious faith and his deep concern for others. This man founded the Toc H Tuberculosis Settlement at Botha’s Hill. His name was Don McKenzie.

It proved very difficult to uncover any detail about the life of this very modest and unassuming person. Eventually I made contact with his sister-in-law Mrs Sheila McKenzie of Westville, who provided both the information and the photographs on which this article has relled. Born in 1903, the son of a magistrate whose duties had taken the family to various rample corners of the province. Don McKenzie was educated at what would later be called Glenwood. High School. At school he was head prefect, as well as captain of both rugby and cricket. He was also deeply religious with a great desire to serve his fellows.

It was this vocation that led him as a young man to join Toc H a charitable organisation started in France during the First World War to care for the needs of soldiers. When the Second World War began. Don McKenzie volunteered to serve in a special Toc H unit with the South African forces, providing clubs and canteens for soldiers. Back in Civvie Street, don worked as an accountant, later as a personnel officer for several Durban companies until 1951. Then he resigned and moved to Botha’s Hill, to establish for Toc H a centre that would provide care and occupation for tuberculosis patients form the Valley many of them small boys.

He arrived there with few resources. An anonymous donation enabled him to buy the land on which he put up several buildings in the first year he lived in a hut he had built for himself with the assistance of one black worker. With the help of weekend volunteers from Durban. Don built a series of pole-and-dake (wattle-and-daub) structures that formed the nucleus of the complex. Gradually the settlement began to take shape. As funds came in. It was possible to add brick buildings: wards a classroom, a kitchen and a chapel. Eventually there was a ward for those still being treated and a workshop for those who were recuperating. Here the patients made sandals receiving payments for each pair completed.

Alan Paton, who spent a year working at the settlement in 1953, was impressed by Don McKenzie a technique of handling the often mischievous boy patients. He won their cooperation and affection without force, without anger, just by the strength and warmth of his own personality. McKenzie, Paton recalled, far preferred being out and about among the patients to being cooped up in this office. One of his great strengths was his ability to persuade donors to support the venture.

Yet he was often himself without money Old Botha’s Hill residents tell the tale of his arrival at the railway station to travel to Durban, only to discover that he was without the fare. Undeterred, he took off the jacket he was wearing, sold it to a passer by for enough to buy a ticket and boarded the train in 1953. Don asked Betty Nye, one of the volunteers, who had helped him build up the complex to marry him. Together they lived at the settlement, running it until Don retired, when control passed to a management committee of Valley residents. Later, its work was incorporated into that of the Valley trust. It is being put to good use of TB patients.

Don McKenzie died in 1978. His work had been recognised in many different quarters, particularly by the Anglican Church, which conferred on him its highest honour for laymen, the Order of Cyrene. He became Commissioner of the Toc H for Southern Africa. The settlement he founded still bears his name and older residents of the area remember him. Otherwise, he has been largely forgotten.

The reason Don gave up a good position at Lever Bros in Durban was due to a vision he had in church.

In 1953 the Administrator of Natal saw fit to award him with a Queen Elizabeth Coronation Medal, for humanitarian work.

He was always proud to have been a member of Glenwood High School, as was his brothers, Eric, Edwin, Noel and Raymond.

Eric’s son, Mark was also Head Prefect and played rugby for Natal. He was out from Australia a few months ago and visited the School.

We would welcome comment and input via Mrs Erasmus.