THERE was much to celebrate last week when Durban Girls’ College’s oldest old girl, Mavis Warder-Griffin, nee Westgate, turned 97 on 10 March and celebrated with friends and family on the Berea.
As a schoolgirl, Mavis had to catch two trolley buses to get to school in the 1930s. At school, she was a member of the Durban Girls’ College swimming team and represented Natal in freestyle. There was no school pool in those days, so swimming team members had to cycle down Marriott Road to the Rachel Findlayson baths on the beachfront, to train. It was with some humour she recalled how she once wore through a takkie when her brakes failed on the steep hill and she had to use her takkie to slow down her bike!
Mavis’s father was a city councillor and her mum ran a soup kitchen for underprivileged children during the Great Depression years. Their property was opposite Westridge Park Tennis Stadium and they had stables and horses. Approximately 20 houses now stand on their old property.
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Mavis and her eldest brother were founder members of the gliding club in Durban. Mavis was one of a handful of lady glider pilots and was also an accomplished rider and rode horses at Muriel Higgs riding school on the Berea, back in the late 1930s and 1940s.
She married an airline captain and former SAAF WW2 fighter pilot in 1950. Robert Warder-Griffin flew for various airlines as the age of jet travel took off. This meant that they lived in Nairobi, (Kenya), Leopoldville (now Kinshasa, in what was the Belgian Congo and is now Zaire), and Beirut (Lebanon), before settling back in Durban with their two daughters, who were also schooled at Durban Girls’ College.
Mavis worked for the South African Embassy in Leopoldville and hosted Penny Coelen, the 1958 Miss South Africa who became South Africa’s first Miss World. Penny overnighted in Leopoldville on her way to the Miss World competition. She has stayed in touch with Mavis ever since.
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