Our family received very bad news today. My dad had passed away somewhat unexpectedly at the age of 79, on Monday tonight in Stellenbosch, South Africa.
He leaves behind my mom (to whom he had been married some 55 years), his four sons, seven grandchildren and a brother.
He was born in 1934 in the district of Calvinia
in the Cape 
Province of South Africa, the middle one of three boys.
Province of South Africa, the middle one of three boys.He was a mechanical engineer, a no-nonsense kind of guy that said once : there’s no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, just follow the logic, and there you have your answer. For a large part of his career he was the managing director of a small tools manufacturing factory in our home town of Vereeniging, where I attended both primary school and high school.
In his spare time my dad loved to work with metal and especially iron. He could design and make anything from garden furniture to trailers for his motorbikes and boats. He also installed a small-block racing engine in one of his beloved Chevrolet trucks, a truck that took the whole family on many tours through Botswana and Namibia. He and my mom also oversaw and had built a number of houses, two of them in Vereeniging, and most of the others in the coastal town of Plettenberg Bay where the family would spend a few weeks for many summers.
We will all miss him very much. We feel blessed and lucky to have had him for a long time.
The picture : One of my favorites, one that I took in 1986 of mom and dad at home in Vereeniging in South Africa.
I have been thinking of you (and your mom and brothers) since receiving the sad news early this morning.
I love the photo that you posted and I have clear, happy memories of the childhood holidays I spent with all of you in Vereeniging, Botswana and Plettenberg Bay. Your dad was a very clever man, profoundly interesting to know, possessing seemingly boundless energy and always very very kind to me and later on also my husband and children. As a child he seemed to me larger than life – not someone to be ignored, nor easily forgotten! I have a smile on my face even now when I think about him.
Heartfelt condolences from Marelu (and Dawid, Jana and David)
hallo Marelu! Baie dankie vir jou inskrywing, en vir die mooi woorde. Ek waardeer dit ten seerste. -Willem
What a nice tribute to your dad. He would be, and is, very pleased with this I’m sure.