By PID Barry Cohen
On February 17th 1961, the Lions Club of Bellville was formed – President Dr Issy Anstey, Secretary Barry Cohen and Treasurer Ferdie Tribelhorn. All of these three members were eventually to become District Governors of District 410A. In May of that year, Barry Cohen attended the second South African Lions convention in Bloemfontein, where Louis Volks was elected District Governor.
In June 1961 DG Louis Volks asked Cohen to form a club in Bishopscourt. The then DDG Sydney Hoffman had tried to form a club without any success.
Cohen called in the assistance of Wally Arenson and Jack Segall to find 20 members to form a club. Cohen had in the meantime been responsible for forming the Lions Club of Goodwood and Heerengracht. Barry, John and Wally put together a team of 21 men invited to a meeting to take place later. All these prospective members were very willing to join except Henry Hodgkiss, who gave the recruiters a hard time and the brush-off. Eventually he condescended to attend the meeting, but no promise of joining. In October 1961 the first meeting of the proposed club at the Vineyard Hotel took place. The speakers were DG Louis Volks, Peter Keeble (Secretary of Lions International for Africa) and Cohen.
The meeting went off well and after taking a vote (which was unanimous) all the invited persons formed the new Lions club. Cohen was elected the charter President only because he had the most to say. Henry Hodgkiss was elected Vice-President and Jack Segall Secretary.
There and then they arranged their first meeting, at Cogills Hotel, Wynberg. They decided to call themselves the Lions Club of Kirstenbosch. Thereafter followed regular meetings, which were dinners, and a variety of projects of all kinds, includingThe members of the club were:
Barry Cohen – Charter President; Henry Hodgkiss – Charter Vice-President; Jack Segall – Charter Secretary; Otto Trigg – Vice-President; Wally Arenson; Aubrey Berman, Jack Fillis (since passed away); Marcus Fredman; Peter Giddy; Lionel Gorfinkel (since passed away); Geoff Hamlyn (since passed away); Barry Heyman; Derek Jowell; Raymond Levick; Harold Levy; Dave Poswell (since passed away); Isaac Sacks; Matthew Saacks (since passed away); Michael Tripp.
The Lions Club of Kirstenbosch took off like a rocket and all these years has been a club in the forefront; it can be safely said that it has always been in the five top clubs in the Multiple District. There were always members of this club in the Cabinet of District 410A – in fact, says Cohen, in the year that he was elected DG, 1966, the vital members of the District were all from Kirstenbosch, which produced an excellent year – even though he had complaints that they were monopolising the District!
Subsequent to Cohen, the District Governor and also the Council Chairman, other Kirstenbosch members became DG, including Henry Hodgkiss, Jack Segall, Matthew Saacks, Dave Kobrin, Aubrey Herbstein and Rashmi Kooverjee.
Kirstenbosch has also had its share of Council Chairmen and eventually even an International Director – the first from South Africa. In the author’s words, “The election of the International Director is a long story of its own, but I must mention that Jack Segall was in our team of eight South Africans who went to Mexico City to fight what appeared to be a futile battle. We succeeded in the end, and set a precedent that was to be followed by two more International Directors for South Africa.”