Personal Letter to Ray Connellan

Ray Connellan passed away two hours after I visited him last week.  I was in the middle of writing this tribute:

Dear Ray

Pippa and I have just returned from visiting you at Constantiaberg Hospital.Daphne told me it was good we came this afternoon as tomorrow might be too late.

The end has come too quickly.  It was only ten days ago, you rang me from England to find out how we had done against Bishops and to remind me to keep you a seat for the SACS game.

It was thirty eight years ago  - when I started teaching at Wynberg  -  that you, as the vice-principal, took this young new teacher aside and said:  ‘Do not smile until June – then you will have no problems in the classroom….’

‘You were a pain in the neck,’ you told me years later. ‘You thought you knew everything in your first year.’  You were quite right, Ray.  I needed quality teachers like you to teach me.  I am sure that you said the same to the other ‘Young Turks’ of that era -  Neil Crawford, Roy Hewett and Jannie de Waal who have all gone on to run their own schools very successfully.

The memories are flooding back.  Some boys thought you had no sense of humour – probably because you applied that ‘don’t smile until June’ philosophy every year in your own classroom!  Those boys were quite wrong.  They needed to see you out of the school environment as I did for so many years – at social functions, on tours, on various holidays including that wonderful Christmas at the beach near Gonubie.

You treated every boy the same – totally fairly and without prejudice.  You only saw the best in all your pupils and were determined to bring out their potential.  You never allowed a bad word to be said about any Wynberg boy – regardless of what he may have done. ‘Hell, man.  How could he have been so stupid?’ was about the worst you could say.

Brett Blythe, who matriculated in the 1980’s, tells a lovely story about you.  He boasted to the prefects of that year that he had never had a hiding.  So they trumped up a charge that he had been talking in Assembly and marched him off to your office.  You realised something was up when you saw a crowd of boys at the end of the corridor, peering round the corner and grinning.

‘Look me in the eye, Brett,’ you said after closing the office door.  ‘Were you talking?’

‘No, Sir.’

So you swore him to secrecy and made a terrific noise giving the armchair a hiding.

That was the real Ray Connellan.

I have been writing to a number of your ex-pupils  over the last two weeks asking them for donations for renovating the rugby scoreboard area in your honour and so many of them have been writing back saying what a difference you made in their lives – both on the sports field and in the science classroom.  It is going to be one of my eternal regrets that I was not able to read their letters to you.

Anton Gerber phoned me from Australia last week.  ‘He changed my life,’ he said.  ‘He made me the man I am today.’

Warren Fish, also in Australia, sent me an email:  ‘Ray was a gentleman and certainly one of the most influential and formative men in my life. I found him inspirational. I only wish that I had found the time to tell him.’

Ray, we will definitely make sure that the scoreboard and clock tower on the Hawthornden Field are fitting tributes to your contribution to Wynberg Boys’ High School.

Wynberg will remember you primarily as a first team rugby coach for eleven years and a first-rate Science Teacher for twenty five years. But we all know that you had so many more strings to your bow.  I remember your enthusiasm after attending Bernadette Fassler’s outstanding Choir Evenings; your pride when one of the Hu brothers, an ex-Science pupil of yours,  wrote to you from M.I.T. telling you about how he had done academically; your admiration of the tenacious Justin Rookledge when we went to watch the first tennis team play on the Rondebosch tennis courts; your delight when your prefects took  your philosophy to heart: ‘It is not how you start, it is how you finish.’

You certainly adhered to that tenet in your own life.

We must never forget that you were also an outstanding cricket coach.  I know,  because for my entire tenure as First Team Cricket coach, you were coaching the u15 A’s.  You passed on players to me who were disciplined, had the correct basics drilled into them and who did not know how to give up.  Come to think of it, aren’t those just the attributes to lead a successful life?  It was no coincidence that Jacques Kallis sponsored a table at his Benefit Dinner a few years ago for the Wynberg teachers and he asked for you to be invited.

For the last few years of your teaching career, you asked to take the u14 ‘midweek’ cricketers and you poured as much energy, enthusiasm and passion into them as you did with your A teams.  Just like you showed in your coaching of 14A rugby teams which you took with Phillip Kriel for so many years.

We certainly had laughs on the sports fields.  I wonder how many staff cricket games we played together?  Wicket-keeping was easy for me when you were bowling your gentle off-spinners because nothing ever beat the bat.  Do you remember that game when the staff played the Old Boys at the ‘Old School’ and Fritz Bing hit you for six sixes in one over?  One even went into the swimming pool and you refused to bowl with a wet ball – which was a bit thick seeing you had bowled it.

Do you remember the last Cape Schools’ Rugby Week at Selborne – your old school? You were instrumental in starting this rugby week in the early 1980’s and Selborne asked you to give the keynote speech at the dinner. You tried to impress everyone by speaking in English, Afrikaans and isi-Xhosa.  You said ‘-Bulala’ (I will kill you…) to the Xhosa boys.  A gasp came from all of them.   You had meant to say ‘-Bulela’ (I welcome you…).

I dined out on that story on many occasions.

Staff braais at Silverhurst after staff cricket and squash games were legendary.  I am not quite sure what Daphne thought of it all – her fridge was raided, her cutlery drawer denuded and people like Des de la Mare and Phillip Kriel refused to leave early.  Yet she, like you, seemed to love it. Martin Stovold, who was staying in Silverhurst with you, used to moan like a drain about these braai’s – because you made him do all the clearing up!

Rayndaphne – one word.  One syllable.  Team-mates for fifty years of marriage.

Bev, Howard and Tim adored and worshipped you. Remember when Alf Morris organised that trip along the Swellendam Trail?  You insisted that your two boys, then young teenagers, accompany you. I only realised why when we were on the trail.  Their packs were double yours – they had to carry all the extras for Dad.

The extent of the closeness of this bond was brought home to me when Bruce Probyn asked me to organise your Farewell Dinner in 1997 – the year of your retirement after 25 years of teaching at Wynberg.  We took great joy in organising a ‘This is Your Life’ presentation along the lines of that done by Eamonn Andrews on British Television.  Bev prepared the traditional ‘Red Book’  which was presented to you by her after the show.

What a credit to you that so many people flew in from all around the country to surprise you – friends and family alike.  Neil and Roy flew in from the Eastern Cape as did Roy Simpson, Headmaster of Grey.  Tommy Higgs, your first principal when you taught at Queens, came in from Somerset West.  We hid them – and all the others - behind the curtain in the hall and brought them onto the stage one by one.

Your only disappointment was knowing that Tim and Caroline had missed their flight from Heathrow but there was some consolation that they had managed to send you a message.  But unknown to you, they were also behind the curtain and came on as the piece de la resistance at the end.  I thought that you were going to break your ankles as you hurtled yourself off our makeshift stage to give them both a bear hug. 

After all that emotion, you then had to give a speech to a far greater gathering than you had anticipated.  I remember you had to forego your prepared speech and  just speak from the heart.

The real Ray Connellan.

I must thank you, too, for recommending to  the Governing Body that I return to Wynberg as a Vice Principal in 1985.  I know that you put pressure on the new Headmaster, Rowan Algie, who had no clue what he was letting himself in for.  I hope that in all the years since then in varying capacities, I have never let you down.

Neat dress. Impeccable manners.  Commitment to a task.   Always aim high.  No-one anywhere is ever better than you.  Never ever, ever give up.  Recognise all this, Ray?   Every Wynberg boy today can recite them in his sleep.  They are part of the five points of our Brand.

Where do you think it all came from?

What about that advice you offered me when I became principal of your school?  ‘Don’t rush into an emotional decision.  Sleep on it first.’

You didn’t want me to apply that same theory with regard to marriage though.  You badgered me for years to hurry up and make a decision.  ‘I had three children before 30,’ you used to tell me. ‘What is the matter with you?’

Then, when that occasion eventually arrived, you were the first to say that Pippa was far too good for me and for years you never ceased telling everyone that Pippa was the best thing that ever happened to me.  Then Pippa asked you to give a surprise speech at my 60th party – why, I don’t know – and you proceeded to make those same comments again!

You were good to the Richardson family.  When our son, Toto,  had cancer in his matric year and ended up missing six months of school, you took him for Science lessons for months and refused to accept a cent.

The genuine Ray Connellan.

I hope you heard what Pippa said to you this afternoon in the hospital.  You were like a second father to her. You were that to me – and more.

We will miss you sitting with us on the Hawthornden bank watching rugby.  Little did Neil Crawford and I know that the Grey game would be your last Wynberg rugby match.  We will miss you at our annual Nussbaum Music Evening.  We will miss you at the Kallis Oval sitting under the oak tree watching the first cricket team.  None of the players ever realised who that chap peering over the pickets was.

Well, for the record, it was Ray Connellan – Wynberg schoolmaster extraordinaire, wonderful mentor, best of mates.

I salute you.

Keith