Unpredictable Journey: A Memoir

By Ernlé W.D. Young

In this memoir Ernl W.D. Young tells of growing up as a farm-boy in Bedfordview, Johannesburg, South Africa, and making the unpredictable life-journey to Palo Alto, California; from being a printer, pastor, and political activist in South Africa to becoming a full professor at Stanford University; from having had to leave his native land because of his implacable opposition to the Nationalist governments apartheid policies and he and his family making new lives in their adopted country. It is the story of one trained in ethics primarily concerned about social justicefounding in Bloemfontein a branch of the Progressive Party, committed to building a racially integrated South Africahaving to make the transition to biomedical ethics and the ethical conduct of research, first at Stanford, and then at NASAs Ames Research Center in Mountain View. It is the story of a fifty-eight-year marriage to his beloved wife Margaret, who believed in him and stood by him through thick and thinof a marriage almost wrecked and then painstakingly salvaged and re-built stronger than ever. It is the story of the achievements and accomplishments of their four children and seven grandchildren.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532032776

Ernlé W.D. Young

Ernl W.D. Young is Emeritus Professor of Medicine (Biomedical ethics) at Stanford University, Palo Alto, and Emeritus Chief, Office for the Protection of Research Participants, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Mountain View. He holds undergraduate and honors degrees from Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, and earned his PhD at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. He is the author, co-author, or editor of four books on biomedical ethics.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 Ernlé W.D. Young.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-3276-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-3278-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-3277-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017918520

iUniverse rev. date: 12/21/2017

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Part 1 Beginnings

1 Forebears

2 Growing Up: Judith’s Paarl, Kensington, Bedfordview—Johannesburg

Part 2 Printer, Theological Student

3 The Model Stationers and Printing Company, Roodepoort, Transvaal

4 Temple Press, London, England

5 Rhodes University

Part 3 Pastor, Preacher, Graduate Student, Political Activist

6 Early Ministry in South Africa

7 Southern Methodist University

8 Concluding Ministry in South Africa

Part 4

9 Stanford University, Palo Alto, California

Part 5 Endings

10 From Woodside, California, to Talent, Oregon

11 Looking Back with Wonder and Gratitude

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

For Margaret, my beloved wife and life’s companion, who with unfailing love has believed in me and stood by me in the best of times and in the worst of times

Foreword

1. Welcome

If you are a family member or a friend of Ernlé Young, you come to this memoir out of love, admiration, or appreciation for this man, or all three; as well as with a curiosity to learn more of his life story. Your times with Ernlé have usually left you feeling better. You have experienced his acceptance, his caring for your spirit, his wit and laughter, his attention to detail in speech and deeds, his love of learning new things, his passionate transparency, his wisdom. Your times together have left you feeling more alive, if not always more comfortable.

If you are not a family member or friend, perhaps you are a reader some of Ernlé’s many books and articles on ethical topics in medicine and health care. You are interested in learning more about this man who writes with such clarity, bringing reason to his analyses of difficult and emotionally turbulent ethical challenges in neonatal intensive care, genetics (is a fertilized egg a person?), or the uses and misuses of technology at the end of a patient’s life. You may have been a student or resident in one of Ernlé’s courses in the medical school at Stanford, or a member of the congregation during one or more of Ernlé’s Sunday sermons at Stanford Memorial or one of the nearby churches.

If you belong to Ernlé’s family, you’ll quickly see that this memoir is meant as a gift to you. He has researched and populated branches and limbs of your family trees, providing colorful details and lights about some of your relatives that may give you smiles of recognition and insight, like seeing an old photograph of a cousin as a child, and noticing the subtle yet telltale smirk that you saw so often that you stopped noticing. Context is there, too: geography and culture. He gives you in his memoir glimpses of the times, some of the cultural and political events—local, national, and professional—that formed the context of the events in his and his family’s life that he recounts. He also gives the gift of transparency, letting you see what he was feeling and thinking as he lived, moved, studied, and worked in so many settings in South Africa and the United States.

I see Ernlé’s memoir as a love story, a story of his love for his strong and beautiful bride of 58 years, Margaret, for his children, Heather, Andrew, Jenny, and Tim, for his mother, Peggy, for Margaret’s parents and her brother, Ken, and his wife; and for his grandchildren and their progeny. Following his marriage, Ernlé’s priority concern became and remains his family’s well-being. Daughter Heather’s beautiful note in the memoir shows that his love is deeply felt and reciprocated.

If you are among Ernlé’s friends and colleagues in South Africa, Britain, Australia, and the United States, you’ll easily find the part of his story that intersects with yours, whether briefly or over a long span of time. You’ll read Ernlé’s memoir because you’re thankful for his presence in your life, for the times you’ve shared, and because you’ve sometimes wondered what makes this guy tick—what moved him to work, play, and sometimes even fist-fight with others.

2. First meeting

I have been Ernlé’s friend and colleague for more than 40 years. I first met him in 1974, when he was 42, more than halfway through his still continuing unpredictable journey. At that time Ernlé was Chaplain to the Stanford University Medical Center, the Associate Minister at Stanford Memorial Church, and a member of the Faculty of Stanford’s Medical School as Senior Lecturer in Medical Ethics.

I met Ernlé in his office on the main floor of the Medical Center. I was nervous. Why? As an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University, I had confided in a faculty colleague, Stuart McLean, that I felt that my approach to teaching about suffering and death in Religious Studies courses had become too academic. I asked him for suggestions about how I might tether my teaching more closely to the experiences of persons living with critical illnesses. Stuart offered to ask Ernlé, his friend and colleague at Stanford, if he would be willing to mentor me or point me in the direction of someone who might.

So there I was, in the midst of an enormous medical center that felt like a giant beehive to me compared to my natural habitat of a quiet college campus. I was encountering for the first time a tall guy with a reddish beard, an easy gait, and a fetching accent, who, I hoped, would be open to letting me try to improve my teaching by helping and learning from hospitalized patients and their families. I was surprised to feel so immediately at ease. This tall guy, who was doing such important and well-recognized work at Stanford University and Memorial Church, ambled into his office in the middle of a busy day and gave me, a total stranger, his full attention. Thirty minutes later, after his listening and gentle questioning helped me realize and organize what I wanted from him, we arranged to meet again so that he could give me a tour of the hospital and agree on how I might begin trying to learn by helping others. He conveyed his support and his genuine interest in sharing my journey. He looked me straight in the eyes the whole time, spoke with the clarity of a mountain stream, and connected with me professional to professional, and behind and through that professional connection, man to man.

That first meeting was life-changing for me. I had found a mentor who would over time become both a professional colleague and a good friend. I drove home from Palo Alto to Santa Clara that afternoon, still nervous about beginning in the Intensive Care Unit’s family waiting area in a few days, yet also glowing with hope from Ernlé’s encouragement to begin a new adventure—one which would lead me away from the ivory tower of university teaching into consulting and teaching in clinical health care ethics, a professional life which I continue into my mid-seventies.

Like kindred planets in a solar system, our orbits would continue to overlap and intersect from time to time over the years, and then diverge again for long periods before converging again, with interpersonal exchanges adding dimensions to our professional camaraderie. We became friends, and are friends still.

3. Reading Ernlé’s Memoir

As I read through this memoir, I enjoyed its structure and clarity. Ernlé organizes it geographically, telling stories about the places where he was living, going to school, trekking, sailing, playing, and working. I learned much about the man, some of which are things that I had noticed and wondered about over the years. For example, I learned how he became so good at playing tennis, which I first experienced at first-hand after we played a set on a court in Menlo Park one day. He stood cool at his end of the court, returning every one of my shots with ease, forcing me to race back and forth, up and back, breathless and sweating, smiling compassionately as I lost every point. I also learned in reading his memoir why he spent so much time in his workshop, making beautiful pieces of furniture. I learned how he came to his way of preparing his sermons and lectures, which had always amazed me with their clarity of thought and sentiment. I learned why he seemed to thrust himself with such passion into his singing, whether a popular ditty or a hymn. I learned why, when he finally let go of working for a living—when he left his work at NASA’s Ames Research Center—he set himself to learning to play the piano, practicing diligently for hours each day.

I learned that his Dad had enkindled his first serious enquiry into philosophy, by impressing on young Ernlé the importance of character, and a curiosity about what character is that sent his son into reading Greek philosophers on train trip commutes back and forth from work to find answers. I learned how he came to be so crazy about Cornish pasties, and why he seems to love talking about cars so much.

(The photo on the cover of the memoir is of a fit young man of 21 about to sail off for many months of hiking and hitchhiking through Britain and Europe, returning afterwards to divinity studies at Rhodes and preaching excursions to cities and towns in Eastern South Africa, sometimes borrowing a car, sometimes thumbing rides, aching with longing for his own car and for the freedom and independence that came with it. When he finally came to climb into a car of his own, he learned all he could about motors, and frequently enough used that knowledge to diagnose engine problems and keep his cars on the road.)

Mostly, though, I learned in reading his memoir that his story is a tale of rich and lasting friendships—both with his own friends and those he shares with Margaret. He could have told his story as one of prodigious professional accomplishments: his lectures, his articles and books in medical ethics, his creation of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, his consulting relationships with biomedical companies and health systems (the Palo Alto, Fresno, and San Francisco Veterans Administration medical centers).

While he provides glimpses of all these in his memoir, my overwhelming impression of my friend from this tale, as I said before, is of the wealth and quality of his friendships. In tender of friendships, Ernlé is the richest man I know. Key friendships for him, in this life story, have been like stepping stones and bridges upon which he has made his way, through and across the currents and the turning points of his life. His many friendships, in each of which he invests his heart and soul, are among his greatest treasures in his memoir and in his life through the present.

4. From the memoir to the man.

Ernlé is a good friend. By that I mean the usual things with friends who stay friends over long periods of time: love and understanding, shared interests (in our case, graduate degrees in theology, professional careers in Clinical Ethics, single malt Scotch), travel to Britain and through Europe, joy at the thought of getting together with each other. Ernlé’s allowing himself the freedom to be himself gives his friends unlimited breathing space, the freedom to be themselves.

Ernlé loves to talk, to share thoughts and stories. Even more, he loves to listen. From time to time in long, almost timeless conversations, out of the blue, he laughs, and exclaims, I love you, man! He is with you, mind, heart, soul, and imp.

Ernlé’s memoir shines the light on those with whom he is sharing time, sometimes more than it reveals him. More than most autobiographies I know, the light and focus in Ernlé’s memoir is most often upon others in his life—with whomever is sharing his table, his church, his congregation, his classroom, his roadway, his campsite, or even his vehicle. Like Ernlé in person, his memoir reveals himself more, in many of its sections, in the background over time, as he pays attention to others. There are few selfies in this story.

In many other sections he does reveal himself, of course: how he felt about his studies, his teachers, his bosses, his colleagues, his mentors. He recounts several choices that he made that have hurt people that he loves and led him to feel deep sadness, shame, guilt, and regret. He must have felt that he owes it to his family and friends to be transparent about those painful aspects of his life as well as the labors, joys, and accomplishments that he relates. I winced a bit during those sections of the memoir—not so much at his descriptions, but imagining the angst I might feel if I invited my Mr. Hyde into the spotlight in view of family, friends, and strangers. At the same time I appreciated and admired Ernlé’s courage in being honest in print, as he is in life. I don’t know many people who can truly say that their lives are an open book.

A person’s character consists, I believe, mostly in what that person loves. Ernlé’s memoir is a love story, a story of his loves. His foundational love, the bedrock of his story, is his love of and for his family. Next is his love for his friends. Then comes his love of fairness, sometimes calling out injustice in public spaces, sometimes helping to make things better for the vulnerable ones, the have-nots in the communities in which he participates. He loves striving for excellence or quality in everything he does in work and play. He delights in bringing joy to his family and his friends. I know that his bubbling presence and his friendship bring tastes of the eternal—abundant and memorable life and joy— to those who know and love him. He calls some of these loves and delights gifts, and credits his family:

Looking back on the story thus far, I can see how significantly my upbringing shaped my life. Being willing to go from the security of the known to the uncertainty of the unknown was part of my heritage. My love for the game of tennis, my delight in singing, playing the piano, and listening to music, and my sense of being at home in the great outdoors were gifts my family gave me.

His family, friends, and colleagues, of course, know the character that is Ernlé Young, the richly human character of a passionate guy whose scratches, scars and flaws on the surface add character to the burnished gold at the core, what he cares for and about. His memoir reflects both the scratches and the core.

5.

I enjoyed reading Ernlé’s brief personal creed at the end of his memoir, and the samples of his sermons that he provides. Pascal observed that the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. Ernlé is a man of both heart and reason. His professed convictions and values have a religious flavor, but they are not dry, and they don’t read like rote recitations or high-sounding pious platitudes. They emerge out of the memoir and they ring true. They rise up from within the preceding story as a kind of prayer. The reader can, when Ernlé names them, recognize them as ingredients giving taste and texture throughout the whole loaf of the memoir. This is a man, as I felt in our very first meeting, who practices transparency with compassion, who leads with his vulnerability more than his strength, and who has forged his integrity in a life lived and being lived deeply and with passion. I believe that those who read his memoir will see what I mean.

Daniel Dugan, PhD

Modesto, CA, USA

July 2017

Preface

After an accident (described in chapter 10) that left me unable to walk and in a wheelchair for more than two months—and then not long afterward with my left arm immobilized for another two months—I continued writing in earnest, first with both hands and then with just one, what I had started earlier and worked on in desultory fashion: the story of my life’s journey. I wanted to do this for our children and grandchildren so that they would better know their Dad and Dad-dad, their Mom and Granny. It was also important to me to record for a wider audience our experience of the inhumanity of South African apartheid, our small part in resisting and working to end it, and the consequences. The autobiographies of Mason Willrich, Herant Katchadourian, and Rod Derbyshire collectively served as an inspiration.

Having now completed this record of the unpredictable road I have traveled, I must acknowledge an immeasurable debt of appreciation and gratitude to several friends and family members who have helped with the book’s eventual birthing process. Herant Katchadourian read and made invaluable editorial comments on two earlier versions of the manuscript. Daniel Dugan not only read it three times but also graciously undertook the writing and then the re-writing of the foreword. Margaret, my wife, and Heather, our daughter, each cast a critical eye on sections of what I had written and nudged me from time to time to make changes in emphasis. John Anton and Coralie Farnham each offered wise editorial suggestions after reading several chapters. Johann Maree read chapter 8 and made useful critical comments. Heather assembled the photographs and drew up the genealogical table included in the book. I am deeply grateful to them all for giving me so much of their time and for their astute insights. Andrew hand-drew the two maps, doing the lettering in his beautiful architectural script. Surely two of life’s greatest blessings are those of a loving family and cherished friends. In both, I am abundantly blessed.

Ernlé W. D. Young

Talent, Oregon

March 2017

PART 1

Beginnings

1

Forebears

From Northumberland and London, England, and Cork, Ireland, to Judith’s Paarl, Johannesburg, South Africa

Tracing my lineage is somewhat confusing because my mother’s maiden name was Young and she married a Young. They were not related. All my grandparents and uncles were Youngs, as are all my male cousins. My grandmothers, aunts, and female cousins took the names of the men they married. Those were the days before the rise of feminism.

My mother’s parents, Thomas Young and Jane Young (neé Cairns), were Geordies, a common nickname for Northumbrians. Northumberland is the northeasternmost of the forty-eight counties that comprise England. It is bordered on the east by the North Sea (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne is its most well-known and major coal-exporting port from which the phrase carrying coals to Newcastle takes its origin), by Hadrian’s Wall to the south, by the Cheviot Range to the west, and by Scotland to the north. Alnwick, on the River Aln, is its premier market town and is the seat of Percy, Duke of Northumberland, whose majestic castle overlooks both the river and the countryside to the north and the town to the south.¹

My grandfather was born on January 31, 1856. He was a man of many parts: farmer, stonemason, publican, sheepdog trainer, and skilled veterinarian, though without any formal training in any of these arts. His father, my great-grandfather, Richard Young, had been an agricultural laborer, and his wife’s father, my great-grandfather, John Wilkins Cairns, was a shepherd.²

Sometime in the latter part of the nineteenth century (probably in the 1870s) he emigrated from Northumberland to South Africa, still a bachelor. The north of England has always been poorer than the south, and in consequence, many in England and Scotland were seeking better lives in the colonies. He bought the farm Orange Springs near Klokolaan, about thirty miles from Ladybrand, in the Orange Free State, and began various enterprises in addition to farming. The Orange Free State was one of three former Boer Republics, the others being Natalia and the Transvaal.

*

30266.png

Under the leadership of the intrepid Dutchman Jan van Riebeeck, the first Europeans to arrive in southern Africa settled in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 and established a refueling station for the ships of the Dutch East India Company. A small number of individual Huguenot refugees joined them in the Cape then or shortly afterward—the first Huguenot to set foot on the southernmost tip of Africa was Maria de la Quellerie, Jan van Riebeeck’s wife. A larger number of French refugees began to arrive in the Cape in 1688 and 1689 after the Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted religious tolerance to Protestants, ushering in a period of intense religious persecution.

With its Mediterranean climate, the Cape was ideally suited to the cultivation of citrus trees, fruits, vegetables, and grapes—fresh produce essential for preventing scurvy in those sailors making the long journey from Europe to Asia two centuries before the Suez Canal was completed in 1869. The Huguenots brought with them their skills as vintners and at Franschoek and Stellenbosch began to produce superb white and red wines. The tradition continues to this day.

At the time, the indigenous people in the area were the nomadic Khoisan (Bushmen). The Africans (as I shall refer to the indigenous tribal Bantu, a generic African word meaning people) were moving steadily south from the north. It was not long before the British set covetous eyes on the Cape refueling station, seeing it as ideal for their own East India Company. They overran the Dutch and gained control of the Cape. In addition to the Khoisan who had been hunted almost to extinction as vermin (as they were then described) and the Dutch, the Cape by then had a population of mixed-race people, part Dutch, part Huguenot, and part Malay (for the Dutch had brought back to the Cape slaves from Malaysia), subsequently known as coloreds.³ The Afrikaans language⁴ evolved from Dutch, with German, French, and Malay words thrown in for good measure.

After the British freed all slaves in the Cape in 1833, the Boers, not about to live on equal terms with the Khoisan and the coloreds, began what is known as the Great Trek, an epic journey by the self-styled voortrekkers over the Hex mountains and the coastal range (including the Drakensberg⁵) into the interior, on the way fighting and conquering the African tribes that were migrating south. They established three Boer Republics independent of Britain—the Orange Free State on the northern side of the great Orange River (the boundary of the Cape), the Transvaal between the Orange and Vaal rivers (vaal means gray in Afrikaans; the Vaal is the major tributary of the Orange), and Natalia on southern Africa’s east coast after conquering the Zulu and Xhosa tribes that had settled there before their arrival.

Natalia, renamed Natal after its invasion and annexation by the British in 1843, has a tropical climate ideally suited to the cultivation of pineapples, bananas, and sugarcane. The major port, Durban, so named after Sir Benjamin D’Urban, first English governor of the territory formerly held by the Boers, was the gateway to the east coast of Africa. To work the sugarcane fields, the British imported indentured workers from India, thus contributing a sizeable number of Indians to southern Africa’s burgeoning population.⁶

After diamonds were discovered in the Orange Free State in the Kimberley area, the British again conquered a republic established by the Boer voortrekkers. They did the same once gold was found in the Transvaal. This led to the first Anglo-Boer war (December 16, 1880–March 23, 1881), also known as the Transvaal War, in which the Boers were victorious. In the second Anglo-Boer war (October 11, 1900–May 31, 1902) the eventual defeat of the Boers by the British was accomplished only at enormous cost in both Boer and British lives.⁷

In 1910 the four provinces, the Cape, Natal, the Orange Free State, and Transvaal, were reconciled into one country, the Union of South Africa, and became a member of the British Commonwealth of nations. It is important to note that the foundations of the subsequent political system of apartheid were laid in 1910. The Constitution of the new country specified that white people only would have the franchise; Africans and coloreds would have white representatives in parliament but were permanently disenfranchised. It is also significant that the Afrikaners in 1918 began working through a secret society known initially as Jonge Zuid Afrika and after 1920 as the Broederbond (the band of brothers) to wrest political power from the British.⁸

English and Afrikaans were declared the official languages, and all South Africans were expected to become proficient in both. Additionally, Africans were fluent in two or more of the fourteen Bantu languages, while whites seldom knew one, and even fewer mastered more than one—with the exception of those who worked in the mines where good communication meant the difference between life and death. All working in the mines learned the basic lingua franca, Fanagalo, with a vocabulary of a mere two hundred words.

006_a_reigun.jpg

In addition to farming, my grandfather trained sheepdogs, served as the local veterinarian, later started the cheese factory in Ladybrand, and built the beautiful little Anglican Church in Ladybrand out of dressed sandstone without mortar—as was the practice in the north of England. He is buried in the church graveyard. In 1973, his son (my Uncle Tom), my mom, Peggy his daughter, Margaret my wife, and I found his tombstone and buried the ashes of his older son (my Uncle Dick) in the same grave as his father.

Later, while in Bloemfontein, I took note of the fact that the walls of the huts of the native Africans in that part of the Orange Free State are all built of dressed stone—without mortar. This is atypical. Throughout the rest of Southern Africa, the walls are constructed of lathe and mud. I often speculate whether this innovation was due to my grandfather’s teaching and example.

In 1880, the first of two Anglo-Boer wars broke out, followed in 1899 by the second, more extensive conflict made famous by the heroic and dramatic escapades of the British journalist, Winston Spencer Churchill. During this second protracted series of battles between the Boers and the British, my grandfather found himself fixed on the horns of a dilemma. He could not fight against the Boers—many of whom had become his friends—or turn against his own people, the British. He solved the problem by returning to Alnwick for the duration of the war.

Back in Alnwick, Richard Young became a publican. British pubs typically were and still are at the center of British social and community life. A young eighteen-year-old girl from Morpeth, six or so miles to the south of Alnwick, by the name of Jane (Jeanie) Cairns, blessed with a beautiful (though untrained) singing voice, performed regularly in the pub and my grandfather, then in his early forties, fell in love with her. They were married on May 29, 1902, when he was forty-six years of age and she just twenty-three. When the Boer War ended in 1902, he took his young bride back with him to Orange Springs, Klokolaan, where their three children were born: Richard Thomas (Dick) Young (1903), Margaret Jane (Peggy) Young, my mother (1904), and Thomas (Tom) Young (1914).

It would have been at this time that my grandfather established the cheese factory and built the church. Prior to the church being erected, the few Anglicans in that part of the Orange Free State worshipped in a little cave on a hill just outside Ladybrand. To this day, every Easter morning, the early congregation crowds into that tiny chapel in a cave to rejoice in the message of transformation and commemorate their humble beginnings.

On one of his many visits to London, my Uncle Tom researched the Geordie side of my Young family history at Somerset House. As far as I know, he never wrote anything down, but I remember him telling us that one of Gran’s forbears (we always called my maternal grandmother Gran) was the product of an extramarital liaison between the Duke of Northumberland and one of his chambermaids. Several others in the family had been hanged for stealing sheep and cattle across the border between Northumberland and Scotland. Gran’s mother Jane Young (neé Gray) lived to the age of ninety-six (I can still remember a black-and-white photograph of the stern-looking old lady that hung in Gran’s and then my mother’s home).

Another of the black-and-white photographs on one of the walls in my parents’ home was of my mother at the age of three riding an enormous mule at Orange Springs, her little legs barely stretching across the animal’s back and her feet at least two or three feet above the stirrups. Peggy became an accomplished horsewoman, and later this was her primary means of getting to and fro from the farm into Ladybrand, the nearest town. Whenever supplies had to be bought, Mom and Gran took their little horse and buggy.

I often imagine, with amazement at her courage, what it must have been like for Gran to move as a young woman from the relative safety of the moors of Northumberland to the veld of the Orange Free State. Wildlife in southern Africa was abundant in those days; Gran would tell of encountering lions on the farm as well as venomous snakes. Taking it all in her stride, she adapted with a resilience that seems characteristic of our family.

My mother’s formal education ended in standard four,⁹ perhaps because there was no middle or high school in Klokolaan. However, she, like Gran, was a gifted musician. The two of them, it seems, were constantly singing, harmonizing with one another entirely by ear. They would tell of not daring to sing while in the horse-drawn buggy if they were at all late; the horse would invariably slow down at the sound of their melodious voices. Soon after leaving school, she began to work toward the Licenciate in Music from Trinity College of Music, London (the LTCL), practicing the piano for up to eight hours a day with the horse listening through the upper half of the kitchen door, taking correspondence courses, and sitting for the examinations in Bloemfontein. Later, she began studying to be a pianist with a music teacher, probably in Ladybrand. By the age of nineteen, she was awarded the LTCL degree and began her own career as a professional musician.

Mom would ride on horseback the thirty miles from Orange Springs to Ladybrand, first for her piano lessons and then later to teach. She also went into Ladybrand (or stayed there once her lessons for the day were over) to play the piano in the one cinema in town. Those were the days of silent movies, and the pianist had to improvise accompanying music to match the mood of each scene. It must have been extremely demanding—but also invaluable for her musical career.

My mother had a sixth sense, as did Gran. Two anecdotes, one about each of them, became part of our family lore. One day, my mother was teaching in Ladybrand when she had a premonition that her father was dying. Instead of staying over until the next day and riding back in broad daylight, she instinctively knew that she needed to get home immediately. It was a moonless night, yet she told of a light shining in front of her horse that safely led her back to Orange Springs. She got home just in time to be with her father as he died.

After my grandfather’s death, Gran had to have an emergency appendectomy. This operation could not be performed in Ladybrand, and she had to be taken to the national hospital in Bloemfontein, about eighty miles away, leaving young Tom, still a child, in the care of my Mom and Uncle Dick. While recuperating in the hospital in Bloemfontein, Gran distinctly heard Dick yelling at his younger brother one night: For God’s sake, Tom, get that candle away from the curtains; you’ll set the house alight! When she returned to Orange Springs, she asked about this incident. Both Uncle Dick and my Mom confirmed that young Tom had indeed carelessly placed a candle under the drapes in the living room of the farmhouse, and Dick had shouted out his warning just in time to avert a conflagration.

After my grandfather’s death, money was in short supply. Gran was compelled to leave the farm and her youngest child in the care of Dick (who became a farmer, about which I will say more later) and my mother, while she went to Naivasha, Kenya, to serve as the governess of the children of a wealthy family named Grant, sending money home for the upkeep of her little family. At some point, when my Mom would have been in her early twenties, that position terminated, and Gran returned to South Africa. Shortly afterward, she decided to sell the farm and move to Johannesburg.¹⁰ Gran bought a little house in Judith’s Paarl¹¹ where she, my Mom, and Uncle Tom lived. Uncle Dick was later appointed the manager of an enormous cattle ranch, West End Ranch, in what was then the British protectorate of Bechuanaland (renamed Botswana after achieving independence in 1966 but remaining within the British Commonwealth). The nearest towns were Mafeking and Maritsani, and the closest village was Setlagoli.

In Johannesburg, Peggy resumed her career as a piano teacher. It was also there that Gran met William Clay, a widower and an engineer with the Proudfoot Civil Engineering Company. They were married, and after his retirement Pop (from the time we first knew him, William Clay wanted us children to call him Pop) they bought a small farm named Trekdrift not far from Zeerust in the Northern Transvaal. It was at Trekdrift at the age of five that I had the first of several close encounters with one of Africa’s many deadly venomous snakes,¹² a puff adder. Adult puff adders are comparatively short, typically about three feet long, but their girth is disproportionally large, often three inches in diameter in the middle section of their bodies. They appear fairly sluggish and don’t move rapidly across the veld as do mambas, for example. Their danger lies in the fact that when anything treads on or near them, they strike backward with lightning speed, and unless antivenom serum is injected within minutes, the bite is fatal.

I was pushing my twin brothers, then about two years old, around the farmyard in an old wheelbarrow. We came to the farm’s outhouse, the only available toilet, which had corrugated iron siding, painted red. On the sunny side of the outhouse, where the siding met the ground, I saw what looked like a gorgeous brightly colored trouser suspender. Putting the wheelbarrow down, I went forward to pick it up. As my shadow fell over it, the puff adder moved. Instinctively I knew it was