Tony Leach

Biography

Tony Leach was born on August 18, 1962 in Shaftesbury, Dorset, England. His parents were Robert Allan Leach and Dorothy Ida Mary Leach. He was a rock engineer/geologist. Tony married Lynn Marie Leach and they divorced in 2006. Together they had the following children: Stefanie Louise Weyers; Craig Andrew Leach. Subsequently, Tony and Karen Midgley had Matthew Kieran Midgley. Tony married Sharon Lee Doubell on September 1, 2006 in Cullinan, Gauteng, South Africa, and became the beloved stepfather to Dayne Michael Robins and Shaylene Tricia Doubell Robins. Tony and Sharon had six grandchildren: Amelia Isabella Weyers, Niklaus Victar Doubell Robins Rodriguez Palmeira, Ethan Weyers, Olivia Sandy Robins, Alexa Lee Robins and Elena Rey Doubell Robins Rodriguez Palmeira.
Tony died of melanoma, which he battled stoically for 6 months, on 2 November 2021.

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Tony Leach: Eulogy from Sharon
My love, you said to me on the day before you died - 'right in the middle of my life, and with all the grandchildren' and you’re not the only one broken by the unfairness of this. I feel as though my soul has been ripped out of my body and the bits that are left are ruptured clingy things that fit nowhere. Everyone whose lives you’ve touched has expressed the shock that it is you who has been taken from us all so soon. But we can all tell you, that it may be right in the middle, but it isn’t a life half-lived. Few people could have been more fulfilled in every aspect of what makes life important than you.

You got it right, my Tony. You loved your career, you adored your family, and you enjoyed your life. Every minute of it. When I first met you it fascinated me that although psychologists speak about ‘living in the moment’ - few of them, and few people ever really just do that naturally. You could do that. You could immerse yourself in the beauty of the moment, and take in all of it. You were always there: present for the people who needed you. I’ve seen you listen to the stories of my teenaged daughter, Shay and again years later, to those of her little boy, with an attention and presence that made you friends forever. I think few people realised that your nature was naturally shy because you listened so well, and because kindness was so much of who you were.

Your parents, Robert and Dorothy, gave you and Heather and Jerry an idyllic childhood in Dorset in the ‘shire’ - even the map Jerry drew of your lane and the fields surrounding looks like something out of Christopher Robin - including a Piggy-Wig corner. It made you a gentle man, and a self-sufficient one, who loved exploring nature on the chalk downs surrounding your house, and further afield in Lyme Regis where - like Mary Anning - you found ammonites from the jurassic era, and began a lifelong fascination with rocks. When we went there on our honeymoon, it took you all of ten minutes to find me my own ammonite, such was your ability for spotting fossils.

You were a very clever man. From Shaftesbury Grammar School with A levels in Maths and Science, you went on to study Mining Geology at the Royal School of Mines and then did a Masters in Engineering Geology at the University of Leeds. When you were snapped up by Anglo American in South Africa, you became the youngest Section Head at Western Deep Levels, the deepest mine shaft in the world. You and Lynne raised two children in Carletonville who were bilingual in ways their parents weren’t. Both Stef and Craig went on to get As in Afrikaans in matric, and I’ve always been sorry that I wasn’t a fly on the wall at the parents’ meetings with their Afrikaans teachers interviewing the British parents of their prodigy students -who it would be quickly revealed spoke almost no Afrikaans themselves. Tony’s endearing description of becoming a father has always stayed with me: “I could not believe how much it was possible to love another human being, until I saw their faces.”

Tony’s skills at computer modelling of the impacts of deep shaft mining meant a move to Johannesburg, to become a Director of Itasca. After he and Lynne separated, he met up with a childhood girlfriend, Karen, with whom he conceived a third child. Although she decided she wanted to raise Matthew in Britain, and Tony would not leave his own children here, chatting to Matthew in these last few months has been the highlight of some very hard days for him.

When I met Tony, we were both at the end of 20 year marriages, and in pretty bad places. In the 17 years we would be together, he taught me that the past is not to be forgotten, but made a part of the present, and he welcomed my own children, Dayne and Shay, into his life as a second father. Actually, I might be smoothing over some dramatics a bit here: of Stef having to walk up 3 flights of stairs behind her father storming off home with her double bed mattress on his head, or Dayne warning Tony that his mother’s aim was ominously improving because when she threw his father’s clothes out of the front window into the pond she’d missed entirely, but now it was notable that they were fishing out his shoes together.

We did so much together, my darling. When I worked in Egypt, you came and explored the off-the-beaten track pyramids - disturbing all the bats in the lowest tunnels and telling this horror story with some relish. When you worked in Thailand, I came along twice, amongst the orchids of Singapore and the beautiful Hindu temples of Bali. We sailed the Med, saw Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and Mykonos and the old Greek gods and their theatre on Delos. We went up the West Coast of Africa to see my slave ancestry on Goree and then to Morocco and Malta and Venice. We took my parents, Dion and Pat, to see the beautiful castles of Great Britain, and ended up at the Edinburgh Tattoo for your 50th birthday. And all of these were made more exciting by our shared passion for history and story-telling and art.

You were a great adventurer: from emigrating to South Africa in your early twenties, to designing mines halfway up the Andes with oxygen tanks on hand, to working in the Congo at the foot of Mt Nyiragongo - the most active volcano in the world. You loved your job, and you came home with vivid stories of the people you’d met and the terrains you’d crossed.

You completed our home, and built us the most beautiful second storey offices, my love. We called ourselves the ‘get shit done people’ and in Port Elizabeth we decided overnight to buy a wooden house because of its view of the dolphins from the jacuzzi, as a sanctuary for our children and unborn grandchildren. You loved it so much, and you worked so hard on it. I expected to retire with you there in our old age. Truly,
You were my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. (WH Auden)

Consulting in your own business with Alan suited you best of all, and I hope it has made him as happy as it made you. It made me proud that you were internationally known and sought out, and our last trip to Bali involving a secret volcano project with the biggest American mining company who had sought you out personally, is a case in point. You have left at the apex of your career, my love - and that’s worth something.

But for the family left behind, it’s no consolation. You loved my children and my parents as your own, and they felt the same about you. I see you carefully helping Dayne with varsity Maths or discussing ‘Portuguese packing’ of cars leaving for the coast with Nuno. I see you chatting to my father about your shared knowledge of mining, or talking with my mother about her father and uncle’s war experiences. Blood couldn’t have made us closer, and the wonderful benefit of having 6 grandchildren delighted us both daily.

I can’t find words to speak about you over the grief, my love. We shared so much that we did together - from researching family history to painting. You were as talented as your mother - an artist by career - and our walls have paintings from both of you all over them. I touch my own portrait of you everytime I walk down the stairs. For me, you are everywhere and in everything around me. Your calm was my rudder and now I don’t even know how to grieve without needing your advice on how to do it. 'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow' stretches out in petty pace without you. 'Out, out, brief candle.'

You will not be forgotten, though. Your worry that Amelia, Ethan, Livvy, Lexy, Niklaus and Elena might not remember you, will not happen. You are too much everywhere in photos and videos and memories of their “Fuzzy Grandpa”. You were indeed a legend in your own time, and you’ll remain one in ours.

You and I believed that Time is the dimension we cannot actually conceive of as humans, and that this linear moment is a long dark highway with a thin white line (Bruce Springsteen) that will join us again in space and time.
You fought so hard and so bravely against this awful disease, and gave us 6 more months - still finding ways to do mine visits with the tiredness and sickness of 4th stage Cancer and its treatment. You refused to believe you were dying until the day I told you that you were, and then you did, blowing me kisses before you slept peacefully for the first time in a long time. You had insisted I left to drive home, and I said I would, once you slept. “Dream of Bali, Goodnight my love,” I whispered, but I still thought there was more time. I believe your spirit waited to see your beloved daughter before going in the morning. On the evening of the day you died, you sent Niklaus to find my ancient old teddy, bought for me by my Grandpa Mac from the back of the toyroom. “Fuzzy said I must give this to you to sleep with … and tell you he likes his back scratched” said Niklaus, who couldn’t know that Tony scratched my back to help me sleep at night. Thank you, my love for this last message through a child who adored you so much. I hear you: Neither ever nor never goodbye. (Apparat)

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A eulogy for my brother Tony Leach from Jeremy:

Tony was an unusual man in my eyes, and I liked that immensely.
We grew up with an unusual background story in many ways: Our Dad wasn't a builder by trade, but built our house and garden by hand with the help of a friend, from a tumbled down old cottage. It took five years and he'd walk miles through snow in winter to carry on with it. We didn't have mains water until I was twelve and got our water from an electric pump in a shallow well by the big Oak tree in the garden - where the bath water turned brackish brown in autumn because of the leaves.

Our Dad had such diverse interests from radio electronics to growing Marrows and fixing cars - he was intensely practical.

Our mum was an artist who'd successfully designed dress and fabric artwork for many years but then became a mother of three - she was fun, creative and a very positive spirit, and encouraged us to always see and appreciate the beauty in the world around us.

We lived surrounded by nature in the Dorset countryside - Grunting Badgers would come into our Dad’s extensive veg patch on late summers evenings, and trample everywhere. A myriad of old hedge rowed fields lay all around as far as the eye could see, with the deep greens of towering Oak trees, cows lazily chewing in pasture and rolling chalky hills.

We were snowed up in the harsh winters of the seventies with power cuts, candles and had to walk to the farm half a mile away for milk and eggs. We played in bales of straw until dusk in the long summers. All our Television sets were ones our Dad had got and repaired from people throwing them away – for some reason we didn’t get ITV for a long time !

Tony was born into this slightly unusual world and for him, like Heather and myself, we just accepted it all as normal. He was the eldest child after our parents had lost another son, Johnny, at the age of one to a brittle bone condition, ten years previously. So Tony seemed a long awaited second chance after the grief of losing Johnny, and it was obvious that he was adored from the moment he landed on this Earth.

Tony's childhood was full of walks and adventures outdoors - making mud dams in the streams, stalking through spooky woods with our hand-carved bows and arrows, our pen-knives always handy. We made crude catapults from car inner-tube rubber, and would half-heartedly chase rabbits into the woods. We drew felt-tip maps of our land like you'd see in adventure stories, with the 'Badlands' laying mysteriously beyond. We used an antique theodolite our Dad acquired to do a meticulous map of our family house and garden.

We had a secret den at the bottom of the garden that our Dad pretended he hadn't seen as he mowed the grass and trimmed the hedges. We called ourselves 'The Lookouts' and later 'The Magpies'. Tony was the captain and I was Lieutenant, with secret badges made with vivid colouring pens and a flag from black and white plastic on a long Hazel branch – the badges and flag kept in a secret box in Tony’s bedroom. We’d stalk people that walked up the lane, arrows ready – laying low and suppressing giggles when they thought they heard something from the other side of the hedge.

Summers at home were filled with our love of building and flying model balsa-and-tissue planes, outside in the cornfields or grassy slopes, running and laughing with joy at our creations. This later turned into flying our big radio controlled gliders on the local Fontmell Downs and surrounding hills, wondering at the silent flight, lifted by the rising air.

We also developed a deep interest in collecting butterflies. Perhaps controversial these days, but through it we developed a genuine wonder of nature, in all it's exquisite, breath-taking beauty. Spending hours studying the wing patterns and markings, and the immense thrill when a rare species was spotted.
Then there would be the caravan holidays, where our courageous Dad would drive our ‘Wolseley six’ car he’d repaired, pulling our caravan down the remotest of Devon lanes to farmers fields on rocky headlands. There Tony started his deep passion for fossils, rocks, strata in cliffs and exploring scary disused mines. Many adventures and interesting experiences were had, mixed with other diverse interests such as fishing, stamps, trainsets, and DIY black and white photography. There was always a natural, effortless sense of interest and adventure. Always self-motivated and resourceful, because we knew no different, with our quite remote upbringing.

Tony began showing a natural artistic ability from a young age. His eye appreciated and captured the things that moved him emotionally - whether it was drawings of butterflies and birds that he made for family Birthday cards, drawings of rugged castles and old weaponry, or meticulous diagrams of human cells for school homework. Where others would struggle with expressing pictures on paper, Tony seemed to have a natural ability. Drawing and art equipment were always close by.

Whooping with laughter at playing-card and board games at Christmas, discovering the joy and wonder of music by taping the radio charts onto cassette, flying down the country lanes without holding handlebars, crushing apples for cider with an old car-jack, laying in tall lush summer grass flying gliders in the deep blue of summer, creeping down disused mine shafts in Wales, playing tennis in the long summers in the garden, hacking at rocks for fossils on the Dorset Jurassic coastline, exploring hidden coves and caves, breathing in the sweet smells sat eating sandwiches on rocky cliff-tops, excitedly rearing tiny hopping frogs from tadpoles - Tony had a lovely young life.

That's the brother I knew the best, before our paths diverged and we went on our separate journeys through life. But he was always there in my mind and always a deep part of me from that beginning, and when we did talk there was always a connection and understanding that needed no words.
Tony clearly went on to blossom and develop on that sound, diverse start in life, to become the deeply interesting, intelligent and passionate man he was. An unusual and therefore very dear and special man and brother in my eyes.

His brother Jeremy.

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Eulogy for my Daddy, Tony Leach, from Stef

What a difficult thing to do, having to write my own Dad’s eulogy. I don’t think anyone is prepared to say goodbye though and I never anticipated it happening so soon.

Dad loved his job and he was obviously destined to be a rock engineer. From a very young age Dad would spend hours, come rain or shine, fossil hunting with Jeremy and Heather on the coastal cliffs and country fields. And whenever we went over to the UK he would take us fossil hunting. Dad was very proud of his rock and fossil collections.

Right from the beginning Dad loved being a father. When I was born, he was besotted with me. There are multiple photos of him holding me with utter adoration in his eyes. After the birth, Dad rushed home to develop the photos he had taken. Despite not being a sporty person, he was willing to play rugby in the garden with Craig when Craig idolized Chester Williams during the rugby world cup 1995, even though the last time he played rugby was at Grammar School.

Being on time was definitely NOT one of Dad’s top qualities (as we all know), but patience was on the top of the list (or at least I think it was). He would spend hours and hours on weekends trying to teach and help me understand maths and physics, which was not an easy process to go through, but Dad was extremely patient and would repeat himself until I began to understand it.

Dad always kept me focused and made sure I got where I needed to be in life. He went as far as taking photos of all the xray training centres at the university open day, so that I didn’t have to wait for the university to send out the lists to all prospective students. Leading me down the aisle to meet my then future husband Rudolf, he held me tight and made sure we followed the correct path despite me wanting to cut corners. Dad always made sure we were properly looked after and cared for.

And so with time our family grew, Craig and I gained a half brother, Matthew, whom I look forward to getting to know better in the years to come. Dad then met Sharon, and the family grew even bigger-with a brother Dayne sister Shay and new grandparents Patricia and Dion. It was quite an adjustment getting used to a bigger family, and after a few trips back and forth with boxes and a mattress between Bassonia and Latona Street, we all got used to one another. A very last-minute Cullinan wedding on Spring Day 2006 meant lots of family lunches every year at “As Greek As It Gets”, and all the memories created from those days will never be forgotten. A bigger family meant a bigger car with lots of beach holidays, and memories created from those trips. One especially fond memory Dayne has is in BHB where Dad decided to go sandboarding, where Dayne Dad and Nuno bought wood and build a sled to go sandboarding on the dunes armed with cobra polish.

One thing that never changed throughout my life was Dad’s love for photography. Dad always had a camera in his hands or close by wherever we went. From developing his own photos, to the thousands of slides and negatives and then to digital, he kept every single one of them-I don’t think he deleted or got rid of any photo. And we will all remember the many many batteries, he would have to carry around at one stage for any day outing, sometimes resulting in many failed attempts at leaving the house as Dad would forget to grab extra batteries and have to run upstairs again to go fetch extras.

With a big family came lots of grandkids! And Dad was a really awesome grandfather. I’m sure all the grandkids will remember Fuzzy for playing with them, for getting down on the floor to play with them. Jumping into the pool with them and bombing everyone else in the pool. Playing hide and seek in the garden and playing with Dad’s train set from his young days. All the pretend tea parties with the girls and nail painting. The sleep overs that resulted in everyone making flapjacks the next morning were a big hit. The love and reassurance he gave the grandkids as well as to Shay and myself as parents went a long way and will always be remembered. The reassuring hug and kiss on the head he gave me one family braai day when Ethan threw a tantrum and I got upset will forever be a special moment between Dad and myself, one I will treasure forever.
Dad, you were a gentleman to the end, and you will forever be missed. I love you forever!

Go jump into that Land Rover that I know is waiting for you and enjoy the new adventures that await while slurping a banana milkshake.

Lots of Love
Stefanie Weyers

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Tony Leach - eulogy from Alan Cook - his best mate and partner at Latona Consulting

Tony was my voice of reason at Latona. We worked together for about 25 years, first as Itasca from Minneapolis and then as Latona, when we split from the US company.
Tony did his side of the business, and I did mine, but we never lost touch with each other, and a few times a year we worked on consulting projects together, when Tony’s rock engineering overlapped with the gases and environment.
And all that time Tony could be relied on to ensure we did our work to our best professional standards and that we were kept sane.

Yes. Tony was my voice of reason. Many times over the years I have called Tony to say ‘I have had it with so and so or with such and such a mine or job’. And Tony always had his reasonable hat on to calm me down and smooth things out. He’d say to me ‘Let them do whatever they like’. My voice of reason.

And from our current professional staff, Rodney Fourie has been a consultant working with us for about 20 years, and Rodney says of Tony ‘a wonderful friendly and amazing man, an expert and dedicated to his vocation’.
Our senior field technician Robyn has been with us for about 12 years and said ‘Tony had the greatest of hearts’.
Zanele, a Geologist by degree, like Tony was, remembers ‘when we were going underground at Impala Platinum I was nervous going to a hard rock mine for the first time. Tony spoke to me alone for 40 minutes, reassuring me and explaining what I’ll see and how things will be. He had so much passion for what he did’.
And our Mining graduate Mxolisi says ‘I am grateful for the impact Tony has had on my life, he was passionate about his work and empathetic and a good teacher’.
Mxolisi is yet another graduate that with help from Tony is now moving on to spread his wings in the mining industry, joining with Jaco, Alfred, Thandile and Tiyiselani, all of whom have benefited from Tony’s wisdom and mentoring.

And I would like to finish with a few words, not words of my own, but from Robert Burns, Scotland national poet, celebrated around the world.

Epitaph on my own Friend
An honest man here is at rest,
As e’er God with His image blest:
The friend of man, the friend of truth;
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this