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Family suffers terribly tragedy

Weeks Street (South)
The street was named after Captain Andries Johannes Weeks, who was the superintendent of the Location to the south of town. The Location was the designated area where people of colour lived at the time.

Capt Weeks passed away in September 1945 at the age of 66 years while he was still in the service of the municipality.

This was a scant three years after the family had suffered a tragic loss during the Second World War. This was brought to my attention by Mr Pat Page in an email I received in 2013. He grew up in Potchefstroom where is father worked at the Agricultural College and his wife, Marion, was the daughter of a long-time editor of the Potchefstroom Herald, Ernest Jenkins. Pat wrote:

When you visited the cemetery I wonder if you came across the graves of two brothers named Andrew and Walter Weeks, who were both in the SA Air Force and were both killed in air crashes and were buried in the Potchefstroom cemetery. It must have been between 1940 and 1942. They were the ‘laat lammetjies’ of Mr Weeks, the superintendent of the Location at the bottom of King Edward/Kerk Street. Walter, we called him ‘Puggy’, went through school with me and was a close friend. A terrible incident happened when the body was sent by train to Potchefstroom. His father was asked to pay the railage (railway charges) to release the body, but did not have the money. As if it wasn’t enough that he had lost a second son! So friends rallied round and paid the railage. I remember going to the funeral. It was harrowing.

Altogether six boys who were in my class at school and a teacher, lost their lives in the War, as well as three others I knew, but were not in my class.

The Burial Register of the Potchefstroom Cemetery revealed that Andrew Cyril Weeks was 23 years old when he passed away. He was buried on 14 December 1942.

Walter Wheymouth Weeks was 19 years old when he passed away. He was buried on 9 June 1942.

More information was supplied by Mr Frikkie (Douggie) Weeks who is busy researching the family history. He said that the Weeks family are descendants of 1820 Settlers. The patriarch of the Potchefstroom Weeks family was one of two brothers who both had 12 children. Apart from the two brothers who died in World War 2, two of their cousins also passed away in that conflict.

The marble panel in the hall of the Potchefstroom High School for Boys with the names of all its former pupils who passed away during the Second World War. The two Weeks brothers are listed.