In Memoriam
Robert George Sainsbury, who was until his death the oldest Old Boy of Paul Roos Gymnasium, passed away peacefully in his sleep on 23 June, a few days before his 103rd birthday. He was hospitalized two weeks before, according to his son, Malcolm.
Uncle Bob, as he was fondly known among the Old Boys, matriculated in 1932 under the rectorship of Paul Roos himself. He left a deep impression on all who met him and the way he adapted to modern ways and the use of e-mail in particularly.
Less than two years ago he sent us his life story as follows:
Robert (Bob) was born on 27 June 1914 in Robertson in the Western Cape.
As has been noted his father’s mission work required moving every six or seven years from one mission station to another. This affected Bob’s schooling but due to the quality of the home teaching of his father, Bob, who had never been to school, was able, at age twelve years, to take his place in school in the normal grade for his age.
After matriculating Bob entered the University of Cape Town hoping to qualify as a civil engineer, but a missionary’s stipend was unable to foot the bill and it became necessary to find a job. Bob was fortunate to get one soon because this was in the middle of the worst financial depression ever experienced in the country. It was a messenger, clerk job at the Old Mutual Insurance Co. He continued to seek other employment, and after six months succeeded in getting an appointment in the Public Service with the Department of Justice, as an accounts clerk in the Magistrate’s Court at Boksburg, 1000 miles north of Cape Town and about 20 east of Johannesburg.
He married Eileen Harper in April 1937 and their daughter, Elaine Mercia was born in 1938.
In November, 1940, he was transferred to the Magistrate’s Office, Tarkastad, in the Eastern Cape Province, 40 miles south of Queenstown. There their first son, Robert Leonard (1942) was born. Soon after the birth Eileen became ill and in June of that year she passed away. This circumstance made it essential for Bob to take the two babies to his parents at Stellenbosch temporarily, and ask that he be transferred to an office closer to them. The government responded very quickly and transferred him to Cape Town Magistrate’s Court, 30 miles from Stellenbosch. Commuting to work was thus possible and the children were ultimately placed in the Marsh Memorial Home in Rondebosch, a suburb of Cape Town. Bob then moved to lodgings in the city.
But within a year Bob was offered promotion to a post in the Department of Labour, which had just taken over all workmen’s accident insurance from the private sector and established a state run Workers’ Compensation Commission and were setting up the necessary experienced staff. He took this promotion and left for Pretoria in October 1943. The children would follow later.
Bob resigned from government service to become the Secretary of the Motor Industrial Council of the then Transvaal Province for three years and then joined a computer firm and finally retired from them on pension after 17 years of service.
Under the auspices of the Order of Christian Service, he then went to Nongoma for a year to supervise the functioning of the missionary activities of the Methodist Church in Northern Zululand, after which he went to Pennington on the Natal South Coast for real retirement.
Bob was an organist as well, and when he arrived in Pretoria he became the organist at the Central Methodist Church. In the choir was a young lady by the name of Winifred Abbott (1924-2010) and she fell for him and, to cut a long but interesting story short, married him on 3rd November 1945. She loved and brought up her two step children and added three more of her own a few years later, Malcolm (born 1949), Thomas Henry (born1951) and Margaret (born1955).
All of Bob’s children and their families live in South Africa except for Elaine and Margaret and their families who live in New Zealand.
Win and Robert were married for 65 years until her death at age 84. After Win’s death in January 2010, he moved in with his youngest son, Thomas, who is the Methodist pastor at Hazyview near the Kruger National Park.
At the time of writing this summary, Bob was 101 years old.
