Adventurous granny celebrates 100th birthday
Joyce Evens’ birthday concludes a year of celebrations with family and friends from across the globe.
WESTVILLE resident Joyce Evens turned 100 years old on Tuesday, November 1.
Evens describes her family as ‘the best in the whole world’, and her family feels the same about their matriarch. One of Evens’ grandsons recently said that the parts he likes the most about himself come from her. Evens’ 100 years have all the marks of a life well lived.
The adventurous granny has two children, five grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. Evens always says that she doesn’t need a birthday party but would rather ‘do something fun’. This led to celebrations in the berg and bush, helicopter flips, zip-lining, hot-air balloon trips and a ride on that ‘motorbike in the sky’ (microlite).
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Daughter Dr Janet Hesketh, aged 71, says that inexpensive family holidays in nature were one of her fondest childhood memories.
Evens was born in North Wales in the United Kingdom. She moved to South Africa after the Second World War as a young mother with her builder husband, Alan. After sailing into Durban on the Stirling Castle in 1950, they lived in Adams Mission, where happy years followed.
Dundee became home to the family in the late 1950s, where Evens’ husband became a teacher, and she found typing work in the magistrate’s court. When the family relocated to Westville, her husband was the woodwork teacher at the then co-educational Westville High School and subsequently at the boys’ high school. Evens worked at Inanda Seminary, McCords Hospital and Durban Girls’ College in administration and secretarial roles.
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Evens describes her family as idealists, and her daughter says that this ethos goes back many generations.
“What a privilege it was to grow up in the home my mom and dad created because their thinking was way ahead of their time – they recycled, treading lightly on the Earth, and didn’t use more resources than necessary,” says Hesketh who is a fourth-generation vegetarian.
“And we had interesting people visiting us. Manilal Gandhi, Mahatma’s son, visited our home at Adams Mission, and we visited him in Phoenix,” says Evens.
Not only was it Evens’ 100th birthday, but it is also the 21st anniversary of her move into Dawncliffe Gardens, a retirement village in Westville. The staff hosted a party for her with cake, and ‘masses’ of her friends. Evens says that making a home here has been the best thing she has ever done. The party concludes a year-long celebration which has seen family visiting from far and wide.
