Notes for Thomas Everitt McDonald MURRAY

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Notes for Thomas Everitt McDonald MURRAY

Information received from Peter Murray in 1997 shows that Thomas Everitt McDonald Murray, "Tim," born June 9, 1910, was a farmer at Roode Bloem farm, continued to live there after retirement, and died August 12, 1991, aged 81. He had an important position in the Rotary Club and numerous other appointments, and travelled all the time. He served in World War II and was taken prisoner when his regiment was captured at Tobruk, and was in a P.O.W. camp in Italy for a year before escaping into the mountains with a friend. There they lived in hiding for another year, keeping alive on wild plants, snails, etc. They were fed too by a family of peasants (at great risk to themselves) whenever possible. He got home in July 1944, and had visited his Italian peasant family whenever he had been overseas, i.e. 1952, 1970, 1972, and 1976. He was a South African Friesland Judge, and had judged in various African countries, including three times in Rhodesia. He was president of the South African Friesland Breeders Association and, as of 1979 or so had been for at least 15 or 16 years. He attended World Conferences in Italy in 1972, and in England in 1976 (at which he was the longest serving president of any Friesland Breeders Association anywhere in the world). In 1970 he and his wife Marie were guests of the Arabian Horse Breeders of the U.K., of the British Friesland Breeders Society, of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, of the Canadian Holstein Friesland Association, of the Executive Secretary of the Holstein Breeders Association of America, and were taken on a visit of the top Studs in the United States. As of 1979 he had also for about eight years been president of the South African Studbock Association. He died unexpectedly from a massive heart attack in August 1991, a great shock to all who knew him.

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