JOE Slingers's article, "70 years of uplifting music" (October 4) about the Rose Lane Church Boys' Brigade in Uitenhage, made me recall two years I spent at Dower College in 1954/55. One of my classmates in Standards 7 and 8 was Denny Maclean, son of Rev Charles Maclean.
On a Sunday morning we hostelites, boys and girls, were marched down Durban Road to Rose Lane Church.
Before the service commenced, a group of brigade boys, with Denny leading, carried in the brigade banner and Denny would place it in a receptacle near the pulpit.
At the end of the service the boys would march in smartly, retrieve the banner and assemble outside the church.
Denny and I, and other classmates Derek Scharnick, Vasant and Ramesh Lalla, Tommy Hector and Ronnie Luyt then proceeded to South End High in Port Elizabeth for matric, there being no high school in Uitenhage then. We all made it through matric and were successful in our chosen professions – teaching, business, etc.
Denny went to Hewat College, taught in Uitenhage and emigrated to Australia, where he passed away.
On a personal note,my father, Henry Saptoe, captained the Chapel Street Boys' Brigade rugby team in Port Elizabeth in the late '30s, before relocating to Humansdorp after the war.
Godfrey Saptoe, Port Elizabeth
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