Altar boy mystery solved

Back row from left: John van Castricum, Chris Moerdyk, (unidentified), Peter Kirk, Jimmy Kirk, and behind him, Norman Kirk, Patrick Eaton, Larry Mills, Anthony Acton.
Middle: Fr Tony Doherty, Mgr Fred Mason. Front: Sean Lance, Ben Schapers, Pax Bell

About a month ago I told the story in this column of an altar server colleague, John van Castricum, who managed to perform a quite elegant 360° loop with a thurible during benediction at the parish of St Pius X in Pretoria during the late 1950s.

Accompanying the story was a photograph I dredged up from an old album showing “Thurible King” van Castricum and me in a group of altar servers.

I was not able to identify many of the youngsters in that photo and asked for help from The Southern Cross readers. And, my goodness, what a response I got.

Not just a response, but the opportunity to make contact with school friends that I had not seen since the final matric farewells at CBC and Loreto Convent in Pretoria at the end of 1960.

My classmate Patrick Eaton wrote to me from the United States where he has been living almost ever since he left school. His sister Janet, another school friend, sent him The Southern Cross article.

Fr Kevin Reynolds with whom I have had a lot of contact since our schooldays where we shared a classroom with the now Bishop of Rustenburg, Kevin Dowling, was able to identify a number of the altar boys. In fact all are identified with the exception of only one.

I got e-mails from Dorothy van Eden and Mary Ainslie—names I did not immediately recognise until I found out that Dorothy was a dear friend called Dolly Bell from my school days. Her father was a senior manager at The Pretoria News when I started my first job there in 1962 and I will always remember how helpful he was to a very green and junior member of staff.

It also turns out that Dolly’s aunt Natalie and my mother-in-law, Mary, who is still hale and hearty and living with us in the Cape, were school friends at Rosebank Convent. Dolly identified her brother Pax, sitting in the front row of the photograph.

Mary Ainslie, I discovered, was another school friend, Mary Richardson, who had quite considerable sports prowess and it was hardly surprising to find that eldest son, Ian, was an Olympic yachtsman and her nephew, Dave, one of South Africa’s great wicketkeepers.

Mgr Vincent Hill also identified three of the altar servers and one of them, Ben Schapers, contacted me to identify himself sitting in the middle of the front row.

I was absolutely delighted to receive by mail a long letter from the current parish priest of St Pius X, Fr Hyacinth Ennis OFN, who enclosed a 50th anniversary brochure for the parish, featuring more early photographs of altar servers including a very good shot of the back of my head.

He identified Fr Tony Doherty as the priest sitting next to Mgr Mason in the photograph. It turns out that the photograph must have been taken very soon after the parish was established.

A friend of John van Castricum who has been in contact with me is Lisa Cassidy from Pretoria, who was married to a very good school friend of my younger brother.

Lisa, a wonderfully imaginative writer in her spare time—she really should do this for a living—kept me laughing my head off as she described her passion for very fast Japanese motorcycles and her clearly excellent relationship with her mother, Bernadette Walton.

So, only one altar boy unidentified. But, probably not for long judging by the enormous reach of The Southern Cross and its capacity to bring so many old friends together after so many years.