Read the 1966 WBHS School Magazine online
Courtesy of the WBHS Archives in the Oude Wijnberg Museum – the digital copy of the 1966 School Magazine.
From Mr Eric Tasker’s Magazine tribute to Mr ‘Freddie’ Thorp on his retirement:
Ten years short of a half-century is a prodigious slice of anyone’s life to devote to the service of an institution. Coming to Wynberg in 1926 as a young Science master, Fritz Gerhard Thorp, highly qualified and talented, has witnessed many changes in the growth and development of the School. Starting in a laboratory with a cracked stone floor and using spirit lamps, he first lectured to a matriculation class of fourteen, a distant though clearly defined memory when silhouetted against the background of his present lectureroom, with its up-to-date equipment and tiers of benches packed with senior pupils …
… At the University of Cape Town, he was a member of the Students’ Representative Council and also President of the Education Society and, apart from being a very keen mountaineer, he captained the U.C.T. First Soccer Eleven …
“Freddie” Thorp will probably be best remembered for his essential kindliness, an endearing quality laced with a quiet sense of humour and a shy friendliness. Many were the times when he went far out of his way to be helpful both to the Staff and the boys he taught, and young masters in particular will not forget his ever-willing assistance and advice’
Well liked by the young and well remembered by those who have left school, the ringing approbation given to his speeches at Old Boys’ Dinners is a warm testimony to his lasting popularity and to the estimation of the value of what he has contributed to Wynberg.
