Jane Elizabeth Mary Handley

A Daughter’s Eulogy

Jane Elizabeth Mary Menne was born in the Winter of 1938 in the beautiful Nkwaleni valley in what was then called Zululand. The second child of Mary and Briton Menne, she arrived a decade or so after their first-born, Peter. Jane was a deeply loved and cherished child, and grew up with the run of the farm, Endwell. She adored her big brother and told many happy stories of the freedom she enjoyed on the farm, swimming in the canal, running through the canefields and playing on the krantzes. Her father headed off to war  while she was still a small child; Briton ultimately died in a prisoner-of war camp in Italy when she was just five.  Her impressive mother nonetheless proceeded to raise the children and run the farm as a widow, this at a time when that was still very unusual. Mary no doubt served as a key example to Jane of what women are capable of.

I always think that this warm and strong foundation of the love she experienced from her family gave Mum tremendous reserves of inner strength and confidence that she was able to call on during the course of her life, during the ups and downs that followed; as my partner Sean remarked to me, Jane was someone who was very comfortable with herself: she knew who she was. This gave her a level of ease and confidence which I believe, in turn, is what she passed down to her own children. It is the assurance that comes from knowing very deep down in the bottom of your heart that you are loved. It is perhaps the greatest gift a parent can give their children – and Mum gave it to us in spades.

As a young woman, Jane left Zululand to attend Technical College in Durban before beginning to work as a teller in a bank in Greytown. I got the sense from how she talked about it that she relished the freedom and autonomy that working life brought her – not least because it brought her the opportunity to own her first car. Mum loved driving; she drove well, with confidence and verve – and she drove fast.   This was something she shared with Dad.

Jane met, and fell in love with our Dad, Neville Handley, in Greytown.  They were married there in the church of St James in February of 1962 and she would be at his side for the next five decades. They raised four children together: James, Mark, Carol and myself, Antoinette. Mum, like Dad, was deeply involved in all of our lives and made us feel like important members of the family. Jane and Neville were partners in business too, as they ran the farm together through good times and all the way through the bad, which included, heartbreakingly, losing the farm in the late 1980s after almost a decade of drought.

Jane was a woman of many talents and great creativity which she expressed in an amazing range of ways:

• She wrote short stories.My brother Mark reminded me that she did a great deal of background research on cricket for one particular short story she was writing – she wanted to get all the details right.  This researchs gave her a love of the game and in the years since she became an avid cricket watcher.
• She was clever and she read widely.Jane was  very interested in politics and current affairs as well as individual human psychology and thinking. She loved ideas. In a different time and place, her life could have had a very different trajectory – but she turned her many talents to what was to hand.
• She had a beautiful voice and sang for years in the church choir at St James, as well as in a special interdenominational performance which Dad recorded on an old 8-track for us so that we could listen to it at home, and she could use it to practice for the performance.
• She designed a series of lovely gardens at her various homes over the decades; she arranged flowers beautifully, and was always wandering home with some unusual grass or a striking piece of driftwood that she had found on the side of the road.
• she knitted,both by hand and by machine; all four of us kids grew up wearing some of her prodigious output, including beautiful Aran sweaters that she designed from her own head and made without any pattern.

But she was also a formidable and tough-minded business woman. She developed her chicken business from almost nothing. It started with just a few dozen chicks that arrived by train at the station at Ahrens up the road. Gradually and step-by-step she built her business up to be a really impressive operation with six large bird houses, each containing hundreds of birds that were sold both live and dressed/frozen. In an era when everyone complained that the major brand of store-bought chickens – do you remember Rainbow chickens? – were tiny and tasteless or, worse,  all tasted like fish (because they were fed fishmeal), Mum’s chickens were fed right. They mixed the feed for the chickens using maize purchased right from the farm, making use of those in-house resources. The chickens had enough air and light to move and breathe properly – and they tasted incredible. Along the way, Mum learned about animal husbandry and medicine, and coped with various waves of disease, as well as fierce competition from more established operators who sought to drive her out of business in a price war.

It grew to be a very impressive and profitable business that by the end received 1000 new  chicks every fortnight. I think she found running the business stressful but also exhilarating. There was, as I said, a vein of toughness that ran through her. I remember one occasion when there was a storm that flooded a run full of very vulnerable day-old chicks and threated to kill all of them. Rather than give up on them or simply leave them to die, mum had all the baby chicks moved indoors  into the house. Imagine the scene: hundreds of tiny baby chicks in the living room with the fireplace blasting as we sought to dry them one-by -one by hand and keep them warm, the chicks all cheeping happily as warmth returned to their bodies.  And like those chicks, her business flourished, and she took tremendous pride and delight in its success

As was Dad, Mum was utterly heartbroken when they had to leave the farm in the late 1980s; but they were tough. Together they took it on the chin and somehow moved on with life. They moved into town and Dad started work at local hardware store. 

It was while we were living back in town, that we decided one Christmas to give Mum a Siamese kitten for her birthday.  We somehow managed to keep the kitten hidden so that it would be a surprise.  On Christmas morning, we were all gathered in the living room, opening presents under the tree.  We had tied a little red bow around the kitten’s neck and let it out of its hiding place. The kitten wandered boldly into the living room to see what all the noise was about.  Mum looked up, spotted the kitten and  promptly burst into tears, scooping the kitten up into her arms!  They were tears of joy of course – but as my brother remarked, it was just as well that the kitten was intended for her, or else someone else would have lost their Christmas present!

Many of you will know that my sister Carol was involved in a devastating motorbike accident when she was in her early twenties. Many have spoken to us of how kind and gentle Mum was. This is all very true, but she was also strong and determined and very protective; she showed a fierce loyalty to defend those she loved.  For months after she was first released from hospital, Mum and Dad took on her rehabilitation at home, working with Carol for hours every day to try and get her body and brain moving again. It wasn’t easy and we remember how Mum worked herself into a state of near total exhaustion in the effort to try to help Carol’s recovery.  Ultimately, Carol moved to her current home at Cheshire in Queensburgh.  After Dad died, Mum moved to the Durban area to be closer to her children, and she continued to visit Carol regularly right up until the end when the Coronavirus put us all into lockdown.

Throughout her life, Jane was active in the church and her faith was a very important part of who she was.  It informed many of her core values.  Jane and Neville both were regular and active members of the St James Anglican congregation in Greytown.  When Mum moved to Bellair, she was no less active in the parish of All Saints, where she served for a number of years as layminister.

Mum died suddenly and unexpectedly on May 13th 2020 from what seemed to be unresolved complications from the hernia operation she had some nine months previously.