Ruth was the twin of George. A favourite aunt whom I did not see much of until the later years of her life.
One day in the 1970s she arrived unexpectedly in Leicester where we lived at the time. Though it must have been twenty years since I had last seen her it was like picking up on a briefly interrupted conversation. The picture shows her, a twin, with Alice, one of my daughter Lucy's twins in about 1988.
Like most of the Smith girls she found work at the Wellington Fruit Growers - I think the Wynberg branch - near the family home. In about 1943 she met Douglas who was in the Air Force, though not air-crew like Ruth's twin George. Douglas was posted abroad in due course.
On his return Ruth and he were married, and had a house at Heathfield about half way between Capetown and Simonstown. They had three sons, Peter, Robert and Richard, with a two year age difference between them. Later the family joined the great trek north to Rhodesia, eventually settling in Salisbury (now Harare in what is now Zimbabwe).
I don't know much about the Rhodesian years. Key points are
Ruth rose to an important management position in the OK Bazaars, the biggest department store chain in Southern Africa at the time.
She and Douglas were divorced, in the early 1960s I think. Some time after Zimbabwean independence Douglas returned to
South Africa and lived in Gordon's Bay in the Western Cape. In early 2002 he was recovering from a stroke and died a year or two later. Ruth was remarried briefly to someone our mother couldn't stand (Muriel was not always very tolerant). Later Ruth married Ted, an Englishman who had been an air traffic control officer in Rhodesia.
Peter did well at school and university and emigrated to America. He eventually rose to the position of Director of the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Professor of Urology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He has made over 250 contributions to the research literature and played a major role in the development of an improved cancer treatment for certain cancers. With numerous distinctions to his credit, he was awarded the 2009 Prize for Basic Cancer Research from the American Association for Cancer Research and the Kirk A. and Dorothy P. Landon Foundation.
Robert, I think, went into the police to begin with, but I have lost track of him. I know nothing of Richard except that he is still around. All three boys (now middle-aged) have produced offspring of their own.
When it became clear in the 1970s that the end of white settler domination in the Rhodesias was in sight, and black majority rule inevitable, instead of returning to the Cape like most of the other 'Rhodesian' family members, Ruth and Ted went to England. Ted's aged mother lived just north of London. They moved in with her and cared for her until her death. In the 1980s they moved to the Cape.
Even before they finally left Rhodesia Ruth and Ted made several visits to England. Among other things they were anxious to get their money out of the country. Since the export of currency was severely restricted they bought antiques and similar high value items and sold them here. When they had settled in the London area they would visit every few months and we travelled down to see them a couple of times.
Some memorable incidents from this period may be worth recounting:
Partly out of her interest in retailing, on one of her earliest visits Ruth toured the local supermarket with Sophie aged about nine, and bought her a Womble (a soft toy based on a kids' TV series). Sophie had it for years. Ruth was good with kids.
Ted is a railway freak and had a vast model railway at home. On one of his Leicester visits he wanted to buy some hard-to-get-in-Rhodesia components. I took him to a model shop where he got them and spent over an hour talking model railways with the proprietor. I didn't understand a word. I also managed to arranged (through a drinking companion who was a signalman) an illegal visit to a signal-box. There was lots of bell ringing and lever pulling and trains flashing by. I think he enjoyed that.
Ruth and Ted adjusted well to a lower standard of living in England. Ted drove a minibus for a private girls' school. They also took on such jobs as delivering telephone directories from time to time, to keep them in pocket money.
Ruth developed a heart condition that was being treated at a prestigious heart hospital.
When Ted's mother died in the mid '80s the house was sold up and they moved back to the Cape. I suspect Ruth would rather have stayed in England but Ted wanted to be near his son by a previous marriage who was doing well for himself there. Unfortunately after a year or two the son died. Not very long after that Ruth succumbed to her heart condition. So it goes.
Ted lived in Fish Hoek for many years. He took to playing the Hammond organ, and had his model railway laid out in the garden. He was friendly with Brenda, and very good to our mother. He died in October 2005.
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