Member Bio: Joy Fenske
Born in South Africa, where she spent most of her life, Joy now resides in Markham and continues dabbling in writing, as she has done for years. She has had articles and letters printed in South African publications. For several years she published an Afrikaans language, monthly newsletter in the town where she lived prior to relocating to Canada in 2006. She majored in English and Communication at the University of South Africa. Joy has been published in ‘Our Canada’ and ‘Arts in Motion,’ the Markham Arts Council publication. Her granddaughter elicited a promise from her to write a biography and Joy now concentrates on this work. She is a prolific reader, biographies being her favourite reading material. Other interests include decorating wedding cakes, porcelain restoration, beadwork, quilting, bridge and collecting bells. Since coming to Canada travelling consumes a great deal of her time, but she’s hoping to end her peripatetic ways soon and resume oil painting.
Ripples
By Joy Fenske
During my year as president of the Florida Toastmaster’s club – club number 920, in South Africa – I presided over many interesting, exciting and memorable meetings. The most shocking of all was on the night in May, 1989, when Danie Du Toit made his second speech.
Toastmaster’s International is a worldwide, American-based organization that focuses on speaking, listening and evaluation as a means of self improvement and developing self-confidence – and Danie needed it desperately!
I arrived early as always, and checked the room. Nedbank club would be visiting us and I was determined that the meeting run smoothly. The tables had been arranged in the traditional U-shape in the ballroom of the Compton Hotel in Maraisburg; sixteen chairs on each side and ten across one end. Jugs of water and glasses sparkled on the white linen tablecloths. A bowl of Imperial mints on each table added the finishing touch. The lectern was placed near the fourth wall opposite the bottom of the ‘U.’
Flanked by the visiting president and our vice-president, I took my seat and looked around the room at the assembled good-looking group, about forty in all, the men in their suits and ties and half a dozen well-dressed women. The Sergeant-at-Arms called the meeting to order.
After welcoming the visitors and our members, I conducted a brief business meeting. A long program lay ahead of us.
The first of the speakers was introduced and took the lectern. He made a passable first presentation. According to the guidelines in the Toastmaster’s manual, he was required to describe himself in a well-organized speech, with a defined introduction, body and conclusion. A Toastmaster then evaluated his delivery and offered encouraging suggestions for improvement.
Next was Danie Du Toit, a well-known, local businessman, who had laboriously made his first address three weeks earlier. He was a self-effacing, forty-nine-year-old widower, whose drive had propelled him from very humble beginnings to prominence as a successful furniture retailer – but he was terrified of speaking before an audience. He’d joined the club to conquer his fear.
The second assignment in the manual was called ‘Be in Earnest’ and required the Toastmaster to use the insight gained in his first speech to articulate a strongly held viewpoint. After his introduction, Danie approached the lectern, coughed a couple of times and nervously began in a squeaky voice, “The other day I went to the funeral of a friend of mine. He was an accountant and had never been sick.”
Danie’s voice became slightly stronger as he told us that Fred, who kept himself healthy by jogging, had everything to live for – a beautiful wife and two small children – yet he died unexpectedly at the age of only forty-two.
He went on, “Have you ever asked yourself, ‘When will it be my turn?’”
During the course of his speech he suggested that, “…we are all three people: the person you think you are, the one you want others to think you are, and the one true you,” adding, almost as an afterthought, “the person you can become.”
Toward the end of his five-minute slot, Danie had developed sufficient emotion to make an impassioned plea for everyone to live a meaningful life full of happiness and contentment.
He ended by saying emphatically, “Do it now! Tomorrow may be too late.”
Then he resumed his seat and was evaluated by a helpful, experienced fellow Toastmaster.
At the conclusion of the following member’s delivery, the meeting was disrupted by a great deal of shuffling around Danie.
“Madam President,” said the Sergeant-at-arms, “Danie is having a seizure.” According to Robert’s Rules of Order, which governs parliamentary procedures at meetings, the Sergeant-at-arms is the only person free to move around the room during a meeting, but immediately, several people went to help Danie.
I called an early recess for tea to allow the growing group around our stricken member to unrestrictedly aid him. Tim thought it was a heart attack and pounded his chest. Harry, one of our visitors, gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Gerard called his daughter to ask about how to treat his seizures and Terry telephoned the paramedics. This was before the proliferation of cell phones and each call was made from the hotel desk telephone.
We had tea and eats, and were socializing while the activity concerning Danie continued on the far side of the room. One of the visitors, scheduled to speak later, asked me to reconvene the meeting. He thought Danie was being looked after by a sufficient number of people. Not able to condone such insensitivity, I refused to do so.
After a seemingly interminable time the paramedics arrived and took over from the amateurs. The meeting was abandoned, the visitors left and our members drifted away. As the president of the club I could not leave the situation unresolved, and a couple of committee members stayed with me.
Danie was pronounced irretrievably dead at about ten and the paramedics said it looked as if he had choked to death. A few of us made statements to the police and the body was removed.
Sadly, Danie had no chance to become the person he could have been. The person others thought he was, was deeply mourned. The large church was packed to capacity with family, friends, acquaintances and our club members at his funeral service.
After the postmortem, we learned that Danie had succumbed to an imperial mint, no bigger than a dime, which had become lodged in his restricted throat. Who would have thought! … and why, oh why, had no one tried the Heimlich manoeuvre? It haunts me to this day.
Twenty years later, I was living on the other side of the world in Markham, Ontario, when an email was sent to me by a Toronto acquaintance naming the ten most bizarre coincidences recorded. Amazingly, the incidence of the death of Danie, the humblest of men, in Maraisburg, a small town on the Witwatersrand in South Africa, was on this worldwide, notable list.