ES GILES SECHIARI (MBBCh 1957) Giles was coauthor with his brother Jerome Sechiari (later an architect) and Denis Pryor (later a school principal) of the epic poem about Lash le Roux and the ducktails in Wits Wits 1957. He remembers building a float with them, along with Abe Rubin (later professor of obstetrics and gynaecology) and Ken Woeber (leading endocrinologist). His aunt donated a derelict HP Singer car for the float and, after a tour of the scrap merchants in Fordsburg, they got it going and even got a traffic police escort from the aunt’s place in Muldersdrift to the procession in town.
Bummies Rag 1969
RHODA TOKER (ELLIS) (BA 1971) Rhoda says she spent more time in the Rag office than in lectures. She was the winning debutante in 1967 and won a trip on the Edinburgh Castle to Southampton before joining a NUSAS student tour of Europe. In 1969, Rhoda and her helpers built a float in the garden of a student’s parents’ home. “All was going well – we worked through the night before the procession – then discovered to our horror that we could not fit our float through the gates. We hadn’t thought about that. The family allowed us to dismantle their gates and part of the brick wall to get out of the driveway!”
HELEN JOUGHIN Helen (Carman) (BSc Physio 1964) and Noel Joughin (BSc 1961, BSc Eng 1962, PhD 1966) recall: “The floats were trucks covered in chicken wire, and we made thousands of tissue-paper flowers to stick into the wire to disguise the vehicles and make them into fantastic creations. We all dressed up and carried collection boxes. We walked next to the floats, and exhorted spectators to give us money. Money was also thrown down on the parade from the higher buildings that we passed.”
Rag 1977
Rhoda Toker Debs’ float, 1969
