• General Notes

  Roderick Leslie is the fifth child of Leslie Herbert GEBHARDT and Mary MCKECHNIE. I was born at the Far East Rand Hospital in Springs, with a clubbed right foot, which appears to be an hereditary ailment in our family. My sister Rosemary and two of her children have it as well. Othe members of our family also have the same ailment but to a far lesser degree than Rosemary and I.
  My earliest memories are of a cot in the Hope Home Children’s Home in Johannesburg, where Rosemary and I spent just over a year of our early lives. What I remember very clearly is that at the end of my cot there was a missing bar through which my sister used to climb, after grabbing a few cookies off the night duty nurses table, and we used to enjoy a late night snack. Needless to say in the morning I got the blame because my bed was full of crumbs. But then…what are younger brothers for, if not to be the fall guy.
  For approximately 18 months I had to have plaster on my leg which was used to straighten the ankle and foot after surgery was performed to set the ankle straight. This plaster had to be replaced periodically and these were my nightmare moments. I remember sitting on a trolley or gurney in the hospital passage watching a nurse, using what appeared to be the biggest pair of pruning shears I had ever seen, cutting the plaster off. The howling I put up would have made me a good fire engine siren, as I thought she was going to off cut my leg. Those were the old days of doing things to correct a problem such as we had.
  

Details of Roderick's family with Ann Maureen  Chaplin (Casey)