Jimmy – charming and witty
I heard about my old chum Jimmy’s passing when I arrived at the airport on Friday evening and held back this tribute until I had a chance to talk to his family. We go back a long way, writes John Freeman.
I spoke to his son Aidan and his wife Elaine this morning. I read on Facebook that Jimmy and Elaine celebrated their 40th anniversary just over two weeks before he died.
Jimmy was an old-school gentleman, charming, witty and very much part of the fabric of racing for as long as I can remember. He was very proud of his two sons and loved his family. He was a very good peoples person and an excellent PR/Marketing man. He was also a well-known TV personality and a very good scribe.
Aidan and Jimmy have been working full-time on the Legends of the Turf project. A project that I know had been very close to Jimmy’s heart for a long time. I lunched with Jimmy and Aidan a few years ago about this project and loved the first part of the project that they showed me on disk. A superb walk down memory lane.
Politician
I gave a copy of that disk to Fanny and Ri Tenderini as it covered much of their early racing years with Syd Laird and Mazarin, Politician and Archangel. They really enjoyed it and told me to inspire Jimmy and Aidan to finish the project. Aidan promises to see it through in Jimmy’s memory.
Aidan reminded me that Jimmy always had this diabetes problem which evidently caused him some heart problems over the years. On Thursday he said he was feeling very tired and went to bed early. He woke early on Friday morning and complained of a pain in his arm – thought he’d just slept badly and went back to bed. At about 6.15am he woke again and told Elaine that he had a pain in his neck. Elaine called Aidan who rushed Jimmy to hospital. Just a short distance from the hospital Jimmy told Aidan that he couldn’t see very well and passed away in the car.
My deepest sympathies to Elaine, Aidan and Jonathan.
I have known Jimmy since I was about 18 years old and our families were associated long before that. Jimmy’s father was a doctor in Pietermaritzburg and owned a few horses. My father and a few chaps owned a hotel in the Valley of a Thousand Hills not far from Pietermaritzburg and Dr Lithgow joined Michael Carey’s celebrations after he won the Gilbey Stakes one year. I met Jimmy a few years later.
Elaine’s late father Les Rathbone was a racehorse trainer and went to the Argentine with my father and me in 1975 – we bought the very first Argentine racehorse ever to come to SA. You can blame that on us. I was the tour guide and had a suite in the hotel where our group, who were all big drinkers, would gather every evening for pre-dinner drinks. Les had a heart attack in the suite.
Lunch at Palermo Racecourse
We had fortunately lunched at Palermo Racecourse that day with General Videla, chief of the interim military government at the time. He gave me his card and said that if ever we needed anything during our stay we were to call him. The Presidential Palace “Casa Rosada” was just a few blocks away from our hotel. I called and his PA sent his personal physician to us right away. Jimmy was very appreciative of my care for his father-in-law who arrived home with us safely a short while later but as an amateur actor Jimmy enjoyed the theatrical aspect of that story which Les retold, amongst other amusing memories from that trip, when we got back.
Jimmy was always correct in the old style and was always a very considerate, passionate player in the industry. I first met him when he worked for SAA and got to know him really well when he worked at Newmarket Turf Club as marketing manager.
He served racing in many different offices throughout his life.
Having married a trainer’s daughter he started his racing career as PR under Sandy Christie at Turffontein. He later served in marketing at Newmarket Turf Club, Durban Turf Club and returned as PR for the Highveld Racing Authority in the pre-Phumelela days. He once moaned to me that he got told that his voice was too cultured for racing television and too old school. I enjoyed the fact that his voice added a touch of class and was really sad when he got less time on TV.
Thanks for the memories, Jimmy
Once of my fondest memories of my early time in Jimmy’s company was when we were in our early 20’s.
I had a girlfriend who lived in Newlands village. Jimmy, Jenny, my sister and I went for a walk around the village late after dinner one night and found ourselves on the steps of the local church. Jimmy always enjoyed hamming it up and delivered his (not too sober) rendition of Noel Coward’s Mrs Worthington on the church steps and suggested that we ring the church bell. I dared him to.
The bell was in a courtyard with a palisade fence around it. He made it to the top of the fence and got the leg of his trousers caught on the spike. “John you better make a plan because I don’t know how I am going to get off this with my dignity in-tact” – we never got to ring that bell.
Jimmy – thanks for all of the memories and for all you meant and will mean for many years to come to the history of racing.
