Saying farewell is the hardest thing to do….

Some people fall into a one-of-a-kind-category. They are the people touching lives and making a difference. One such person was a dear friend and colleague to all of us, Magriet Lee.

Shall I ever forget the day in March 1989 when I was supposed to start working on level 5 and an excited Magriet came to fetch me, telling me she was kidnapping me for herself at the Medical Library!

What a journey it was for me, learning strategic and lifestyle skills on the way!

Magriet, a NWU graduate, was appointed Head of the Medical Library in 1982 and set about enhancing the library’s visibility in the Faculty of Health Sciences, building it into an essential part of the Health Sciences curriculum. She played her part in making the library essential during the transformation process from the old curriculum to the new problem-oriented, outcomes-based one.  UP took the lead in SA with this major transformation in 1997 under the guidance of Prof Jan van der Merwe, Dean of the Faculty at that time.  He started the practice of sending librarians to international conferences in the belief that the insights learned, would be to the Faculty’s advantage. Magriet Lee and Maureen Brassel visited Duke university where the transformation to a problem-based curriculum had already taken place. I’ll forever keep the international Entrepreneurial Conference in North Carolina where Magriet and I delivered a presentation, close to my heart.

Although Head of the Library, Magriet functioned as information specialist for the Departments of Nursing and Psychiatry till the day of her retirement in 2017.  She gave new life to the small library at Weskoppies, the psychiatry hospital where her clients were based.  In Magriet’s own words: “This is a true opportunity for embedded librarianship and it is a privilege to provide a personal service to one of the Departments with high-level research outputs in the Faculty”.

Weskoppies library before and after ….

One of the highlights in Magriet’s career was her creation of The Hans Merensky Story, a project she tackled with passion.  Her love of detective medical stories is evident in the way she searched for every scrap of information she could find about this monumental figure in the history of South Africa and the Merensky Library. For the interested colleagues who would like to know more:

Magriet was an avid reader and music lover. It was not strange then that her last missed appointment, was to attend a musical performance. She loved travelling and experienced the culture of her so-beloved Ireland and Prague, the music city. Many people had first-hand experience of one of her hobbies when they were the receivers of knitted blankets, colourful and made with love.

Of all her attributes, academic and professional, the most outstanding was her compassion for people. She mentored and led with a kind of humbleness and grace that made people believe in themselves and their abilities.  As her successor, Kabelo Nzima once said, had it not been for Magriet, many of us would not be the people we are today.

Her passing was too unexpected, too difficult to understand, too soon ….