Louis Egbertus Rood

Medical doctor in Kempton Park, Gauteng, for a time. Chairman to the VanRhynsdorp School Board. "Apart from his farm at Vredendal, Louis Rood also owned a house at Strandfontein which, while much smaller than Wykie and Anna van Wyk’s place, had the best position in tiny resort with excellent views of the sea on two sides. This was where my grandmother and Aunt Pietie chose to stay when visiting the Strandfontein and where my family were housed when on holiday.

Interestingly enough, Strandfontein’s official name is Louis Rood Strand though this is not widely known and seldom used.

An extraordinary man who adored rugby (he played a great deal of it as a schoolboy and later, as captain of Villagers in Cape Town in 1918, 1919 and 1920) and liked showing me the front tooth that had to be capped after being broken during a particularly tough match) He had a passion for hunting, fishing and serving on committees.  In this latter capacity he was not only the colonel of the local civil defence force unit and director on numerous bodies but also served as mayor of Vredendal, Chairman of the Divsional Council and eventually as a Member of the Provincial Council MPC where he was eventually elected President.  He was also immensely popular and I remember well how he doffed his hat to greetings from almost every single passing car while driving around the countryside near VanRhynsdorp or Vredendal.

Louis married Betsy Laubcher when in his forties and lived long enough to see his much adored daughters, Sylvia and Petrusa, through their childhood before dying of cancer in 1952.

Two UCT friends and I hitchhiked down to Vredendal in early 1952 so that I could take my leave of my dying uncle before going up to Cambridge and I remember well how his faced death with quiet composure and courage. In his will, he left me a fine Sauer 20 bore shotgun.

Louis was the Rood uncle I knew best and therefore loved most. I have so many memories of him from my early childhood through his honeymoon in Windhoek (where we lived) to his dying days and he would be what can only be described as a man’s man with the gentleness of a true gentleman. He was also very much a self-made man, too.

By the time he was a student, the family’s fortune had been used up, much of it through hare-brained schemes of his brothers Mauritz and EP who had both died when he was still a young boy.

He was an exceedingly kind man who looked after his sister, "Pietie", and his mother, my grandmother, during all their years in VanRhynsdorp and anyone else in need.

My father ( orphaned, only child of a missionary. The missionary died at Ebenezer, near VanRhynsdorp, when my father was but two years old, and a widowed (though remarried – to a van Rhyn) mother who died when he was 11), adored him. The two were excellent hunters “(Frank when a buck was standing still and Louis if it was running”) and anglers, both were involved in and excelled at politics (one staunch United Party, the other an equally staunch Nationalist) and both loved rugby. " recollection by Francios Marais