Obituaries Dan Robinson
Lionel Miles
(1923-2018)
(1928-2017)
D
aniel Hilyard “Hagar” Robinson (BArch 1950) was still rowing in regattas in his 80s. “Most of your rowing men are useless at ball games,” he told Wits Review in December 2015, “and rowing is a sport you do sitting down, so you can do it all your life.” After graduating, he and other ex-Wits University Boat Club members started the Viking Rowing Club – and kept at it for the next 70-odd years. He was a great and longstanding supporter of the WUBC and of University Rowing in general. It was only one of the varied activities he enjoyed over his long life, which started at the old Hills House hostel of King Edward VII School (KES), where his father Frank G Robinson was the housemaster and then headmaster. Playing the Great Highland Bagpipe was another great passion. He played right up until a few months before his death. Robinson served in North Africa and Italy in World War II, and for decades collected military uniforms, artefacts, books and other records. He was able to lay his hand on a source or authority, within minutes, to back up his recollections of incidents and
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stories recorded by a very wide range of authors. Some of his meticulously painted lead soldiers and pipers are on display at the museum at KES. He also made an accurate model of the HMS Swiftsure, the ship which a Robinson forebear had captained in 1804. His father had served in World War I. His work as an architect included houses for the rich and famous, office buildings such as SA Breweries’ across Jan Smuts Avenue from Wits, and buildings such as the DJ du Plessis Centre on the West Campus of the University. Though he had been sent to Hilton College when his father died, Robinson remained devoted to KES and attended every Service of Remembrance there from the end of WWII until 2017. Likeable, considerate, full of humour and gusto, he was a scholar and a gentleman who fulfilled the KES cenotaph exhortation: “Sons of this place, let this of you be said, that you who live are worthy of your dead.” He leaves his wife Moyra (who studied Quantity Surveying at Wits), daughters Lucy and Sally, stepsons Craig and Dudley Levieux (both Witsies) and their families. Source: Alan Munro
D
r Lionel Palmer Miles (BDS 1951) was born in Molteno in the Eastern Cape. His education began in a one-roomed farm school and he matriculated from Queen’s College in Queenstown. He enrolled at Wits at the age of 16, qualified as a dentist and then opened a practice in Worcester. After working in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s, he returned to South Africa with his wife Marion (a Canadian nurse) and became the first maxillofacial surgery specialist at Groote Schuur Hospital. He joined the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of the Western Cape in 1983 and became Dean in 1987. His obituary in the South African Medical Journal says: “A deeply religious person, Lionel believed in fairness, justice and equality for all, and showed a deep compassion for humanity. … Lionel, in his inimitable way, worked with his quiet diplomacy and was able to transcend the many political, cultural and social barriers that were suffocating the university and teaching hospitals at that time.” He is also remembered for his deep love for music and his desire to use his musical talents in the service of his faith. He is survived by his wife, children Jane and Gordon, and grandchildren. Source: Peter Gordon, South African Medical Journal
