Joan Hayter dies aged 103
Joan died peacefully at the Carewell Hospital in Still Bay on April 3.
A former resident of 23 years of Boksburg’s Ridgeview Retirement Home, Johanna Nel, fondly known as Joan, died at the age of 103 on April 3.
Joan was born to Sophia Johanna Jacoba Nel on December 2, 1920, in the Paul Kruger House in Pretoria. She remembered her mom saying she weighed 3½ pounds at birth and was born on a Tuesday at 09:10.
Joan’s early childhood has happy memories growing up on the farm Rietfontein in Potchefstroom and later when she visited her grandparents on the farm, Dublin near Stella in the North Western Cape.
When Joan started school in about 1926, she attended the convent in that area and remembered her aunt giving her a lift to school on a bicycle. She also had a tickey (threepence) a day to buy sweets from the local shop after school.
Later, Joan attended the Klipdrift School on the Vereeniging Road and when she moved to Pretoria attended Bergerwright School.
In 1939, Joan married Joe Millett-Clay and the couple had four children. She lived in Welkom in the Free State, where Joe was a foreman fitter and turner at Western Holdings Gold Mine.
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Joe died in 1973 and Joan married Fred Hayter on September 27, 1975.
After Fred’s death in May 1987, Joan looked after her elderly mother and stepfather for seven years until they both passed away.
In 1995, she moved to Ridgeview Retirement Village in Boksburg and had 23 wonderful years as a resident there.
Her favourite hobby was knitting and her religion was close to her heart.
Most of Joan’s family have lived into their late 90’s, and she was also blessed with good family genes.
In 2018, Joan moved to the Carewell Centre in Still Bay to be closer to her daughter, who gives a lot of praise to the staff and carers there for the wonderful job they did in taking care of Joan, who was blessed with good health for most of her life.
Joan died peacefully at the Carewell Hospital in Still Bay on April 3.
She had four children, 10 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.
(Submitted by Glynis Millett-Clay).
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