50-year-old love letter mystery solved

Cape Town - 141022 - A letter dated 27 February 1964 was delivered more than 50 years later to the address at 12 Vernor Court, Marais Road, Sea Point, Cape Town. The letter is addressed to a Miss V. van Schoor and appears to have been written by her future partner whose name is not entirely legible. Pictured is Julius Du Toit, a resident of Vernor Court, with the letter. Reporter: Chelsea Geach Picture: David Ritchie

Cape Town - 141022 - A letter dated 27 February 1964 was delivered more than 50 years later to the address at 12 Vernor Court, Marais Road, Sea Point, Cape Town. The letter is addressed to a Miss V. van Schoor and appears to have been written by her future partner whose name is not entirely legible. Pictured is Julius Du Toit, a resident of Vernor Court, with the letter. Reporter: Chelsea Geach Picture: David Ritchie

Published Oct 24, 2014

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Cape Town - Christmas camps at Kommetjie, games on the beach, and begging condensed milk off soldiers in the camp below Slangkop during World War II – these are the memories of cousins and friends of Val van Schoor and Merville le Roux, whose love story made headlines on Thursday.

Earlier this month, and 50 years after he wrote to Val telling her he had asked her parents for permission to marry her, Merville’s letter was finally delivered to an address in Sea Point.

Merville and Val have died, but they were well suited, says cousin Willie van Schoor of Kommetjie. “Were they happily married? Very much so.”

Van Schoor and a friend, Liz Goles of Kalk Bay, were among those whose memories were stirred by the article in Thursday’s Cape Argus (and carried on IOL) about Merville’s letter to Val, written in February 1964.

The letter, posted from Orkney in the old Transvaal, arrived at a flat belonging to Julius du Toit last week. “I was surprised, until I opened it and looked at the date,” said Du Toit. “Then I was stunned.”

In the late-night letter, written in 1964, Merville tells Val: “I have just spent a nerve-wracking hour composing a two-page letter to your folks. I hope it was not too formal and polite.”

He signs it: “Bye-bye for now with deepest love, from your future partner, Merville”.

Willie van Schoor, who still lives in the family home in Kommetjie, said Val lived there with her parents and sisters. Merville was a second cousin who lived in Joburg, but he would come down to Kommetjie for the Christmas holidays.

Friend Liz Goles, 78, who lives in Kalk Bay, said she and Val lived in Lighthouse Road and both went to Slangkop Primary School near present-day Ocean View, in the 1940s.

“Merville’s family used to come down at Christmas and camp there. Lots of people used to camp at Kommetjie in the holidays, near Skilpadsvlei. “

During the war there was a military camp near Slangkop lighthouse, and my brother and me would sneak into the camp for condensed milk, which our mother couldn’t buy.”

Val and Merville married in 1965 – so presumably Merville’s letter got the thumbs-up from Val’s parents – and they lived for a while in Meadowridge before moving to Joburg.

They had a son, Philip, who is a mechanical engineer in Berkley, California. He designed Formula 1 racing cars, and Van Schoor said Philip had been a member of the design team that produced the Penske PC-23 racing car known as The Beast that competed in the Indy 500 in 1994 and 1995.

Van Schoor described Merville as “quite a character”. He worked his way up to senior post at the Old Mutual, and then quit to start a security company. “He was capable, firm in defence of a principle, and was very involved in the church in later years.”

Val was “just as sweet as can be, one of those lovely people”.

in 1988 Val succumbed to a genetic disease that also killed her sister. The illness was the reason the couple had only one child, although they did adopt a daughter.

Merville, in his 70s, died in Gauteng earlier this year. Van Schoor attended the funeral.

Cape Argus

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