KLOOF Rest Home resident, Petar Popovic, celebrated his 100th birthday surrounded by his friends and the home’s staff. He was born on 17 June, 1916 in Yugoslavia.
Petar was the last one of seven children and his father died before he was born. He was orphaned at the age of two and lived in an orphanage until he was adopted by one of his older sisters and her husband at the age of six.
Petar is a purpose-driven man with a will to succeed. He studied and worked hard to become a fighter pilot with the fledgling Yugoslavian air force. When World War II broke out and Hitler’s forces were advancing on Belgrade, he was ordered, with the rest of the pilots, to fly the aeroplanes to safety, to Greece. He then flew on to North Africa where he joined with the Allied Forces for the remainder of the war.
At the end of the war, he was stranded at the British base at Casablanca, Morocco with no-where to go. After living and working on the base for two years, he was eventually offered British citizenship and an education in Britain. His first love, to become a medical doctor, was denied, so he studied to become a radiographer. He went on to become a world-renowned radiographer and presented papers around the world. After working at leading hospitals in London and Australia, he was lured to the mining industry in South Africa in the early 1960s where he worked until he retired in 1981.
He married his ‘English rose’, Mary, in the 1950s and they were married for 62 years before she passed away a few years ago. Being foreign, in the late 1940s and early 1950s he was shunned by Mary’s family and this led him to work in Australia and South Africa. They never had any children. While in his 90s, Petar nursed Mary until she had to enter a nursing home, before he himself entered Kloof Nursing Home.
Petar only once returned to Yugoslavia in the 1970s, some 38 years after he left during the war. He had been brought up in a capitalist society and had tertiary education and had travelled extensively. His only contact with his family is a great-grandson of one of his sisters. Mary was an only child and there is no contact with any English family.
Petar is an extremely well-read man and speaks seven different languages. He is an extremely private person and very speaks very little of his escapades, but rather shows interest in other people and their families.
