WITS REVIEW
“We cherish the memories of those wonderful years.”
VIV & NOEL Viv Pope (Jones) is a Witsie who found the real thing on campus: her husband Noel, whom she married 64 years ago. Noel, a Mechanical Engineering student in 1943, was enlisted in the SA Air Force. He had got his wings as a fighter pilot at the end of 1944 and was about to go to Burma when peace was declared. So back he came to Wits, to College House men’s res. Viv arrived at Wits in 1947, a “green convent girl” from Ermelo. “I had four wonderful years in Sunnyside Women’s Res,” she recalls. “I played timpani in the orchestra and sang in the chorus in Don Giovanni and Cosi Fan Tutte.” She later became a teacher. “Noel’s and my paths crossed from about 1948. He was courting a Sunnyside friend of mine, Mary, and had a dreadful motorbike accident on his way back from the Wits Boat Club at Rand Leases. He landed in the Maxillofacial and Dental Hospital, then in Braamfontein. Mary visited him there regularly and we took it in turns to accompany her on the walk. My first face-to-face with Noel was seeing two staring, ‘bloody’ eyes on a reconstructed face,” she says. But the eyes had it. By 1950 they were a couple. The Popes were married in 1952 but both continued to be Wits students for many years, says Viv (MEd 1979). Noel did his PhD on wind tunnels (titled “Supersonic nozzle design”) in 1960, at a time when aeronautical engineers were working on achieving speeds that would break the sound barrier. “Noel was an Anglo American employee all his working life and I lectured at the Johannesburg College of Education (now Wits School of Education) for 18 stimulating years.” They live at the Village of Golden Harvest in Randburg, love the outdoors and are active in the University of the Third Age, the South African Archaeological Society and the Botanical Society. “Wits shaped our lives and has contributed to the shaping of our son Trevor (also an engineer) and his two children. We cherish the memories of those wonderful years.” 44
DANIELLA & GRANT There was no instant connection when Daniella Crankshaw (Roman) first set eyes on Grant Crankshaw at the Wits Drama School in 1989. “We didn’t like each other at all at first, but through studying drama, you learn about yourself and others, and get different perspectives on life. I’d been so naïve at school but my eyes were opened,” says Daniella. Three months on, they were a couple. By their final year they were engaged. Daniella says studying drama was “brilliant training in how to read people and situations and act accordingly”. Drama gave the couple the insight and flexibility to adapt, which was useful when Grant converted to Judaism to marry Daniella. They emigrated to Israel in 1997, encountering an entirely different culture there. Now, with their son Jared, a sound engineer, they run Desert Rose Productions. They have a dream to create a cultural centre in Israel where the arts can flourish in the English language, a neutral language of expression for Israelis of every religion. They also created a light-hearted play about their marriage and life with all its absurd and challenging situations, called Together, Against the Odds, which came to South Africa in November 2016. “You’ve got to laugh,” says Daniella – and audiences did.
