En Passant: Harry – an unsung hero

OVER THE YEARS here at the Vryheid Herald, I have taken thousands of photographs of people (I may even have taken yours), and I have saved them into a folder of pictures of people. It now contains hundreds and hundreds of head-and-shoulders pictures of Vryheid people.

My thinking originally was that it would be useful to have the faces of Vryheid people on file in case we suddenly needed a picture of, say, Jimmy Smith, because he’d won the Lotto, won the Comrades, married Julia Roberts, robbed a bank or become the mayor. Sometimes, sadly, the pictures have proved useful for the person’s obituary.

It’s a fascinating collection – all these people who I once met and photographed, many of whom I only met as a result of working at the Vryheid Herald. Some of them subsequently became more than photographed faces, became acquaintances and even friends.

I was looking at all these photographs last week, ruminating on the past 18-plus years at the Vryheid Herald, as my time here runs out, and it occurred to me that one of the faces among all the faces was of a person who I have photographed numerous times. He has, in fact, been part of the Vryheid fabric the entire time I have been at the Vryheid Herald.

It’s Harry Heyns.

I can’t remember Harry ever being a customer of mine when I was at Rebel Bottle Store before I joined the Herald, but I doubt he was because back in the 1970’s Harry was the manager at Stilwater Motel and I expect got staff discounts at Stilwater off sales here in town. So I probably first encountered Harry after I’d joined the newspaper and used to attend council meetings. This would have been around 1997/98.

Those were the heady days of the TLC, which stood for Transitional Local Council, not Tender Loving Care, although in truth, in those days there was in council a gentler, more considerate, caring tone or spirit, more mutual respect, and an absence of arrogance. People, councillors, were a lot more positive then, a lot less jaded and cynical and self-serving.

Harry had been the last Vryheid mayor under the old dispensation; Martin Mtshali was the first under the new. Even then, it struck me that Harry’s was the voice of reason. Having been a town councillor since 1988 as well as mayor, he was hugely experienced, but also very down to earth. In council I never heard him pontificate, Harry called a spade a spade, but also he seemed to have realised the truth in the adage, “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”.

So that’s how I knew him, as a councillor, but he’s surprised me a couple of times. Once was when they revamped Checkers supermarket and the Bloemnel Centre, and they had this grand opening, and who was a guest of honour? Harry Heyns, because it was Harry who’d opened and managed the first Checkers store in Vryheid back in, can you believe it, 1968. That surprised me.

From there Harry went to manage Stilwater Motel (he studied Hotel Management at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland), which he left in 1979 to buy into Glenbar, the estate agent. He retired from Glenbar in 2002, but I imagine that being in the property business for all those years enabled Harry to keep an insider’s finger on the economic pulse of the town. Thus he was a valuable member of the Vryheid Chamber of Commerce when it existed, chairing that body for a number of years.

I was surprised again by Harry when I attended the funeral of my old friend Morris Christie, which was held in the Methodist Church in President Street. There I learned, because I saw it with my own eyes (although in truth, I couldn’t hear him) that Harry has a singing voice – he sings in the Methodist Church choir.

I don’t know why that surprised me, but it did. You somehow don’t expect a man who tinkers with old cars, and can tell a sprocket from a gasket, to also be able to differentiate between B-flat and A-sharp. That side of Harry I confess I do not know.

I know him from council, I know him from the Vryheid Vintage Car Club, and I know him from Vryheid Hospice where he has been the chairman many, many years.

During the years that I have been at the Vryheid Herald, I have been made aware that Harry has a huge affection for this town, and his “hands on” approach to the problems that he attempts to solve belie the fact that Harry is 73 years old. Great Scott, the man is heading towards 80 years old!

There probably is not a man or woman, councillor or municipal employee, who has the overall knowledge about our town that Harry has. It will be a huge store of knowledge built up over nearly 30 years of service, that will be lost when or if Harry retires.

And he shares that knowledge willingly. I don’t know how many times I’ve phoned him about a municipal issue, and if he can he will always give me an answer. He is one of the few people who if you leave a message, he will get back to you.

He really is, quite honestly, a hero. If there is one person whose consistent dedication to this town is deserving of the “Freedom of the City” when he retires, it’s Harry Heyns.

My old friend, I salute you.