John Pears was a well -liked classmate, with a pleasant, direct manner and a gift for amusing companionship.  At school he took an active part in the  Dramatic Society, where he proved to be an actor of considerable talent.  John gave a most riveting performance as the king in "play within a play" in the 1961 production of Hamlet.

Even as a boy John had a fascination with nature, and with his close friend, our classmate Rodney (Buck) Buchan-Smith, he often ventured to game reserves and to explorations of the countryside, coast, and wilderness bush.  The two boys developed an interest in snakes, some of which they captured and sold to Fitzsimons Snake Park on the Durban beachfront.  They soon expanded their enterprise by raising mice and collecting frogs for the Snake Park to feed to its serpents -- and then developed yet another line of business by milking captured snakes for venom to be turned into remedies for snake bites.  John also set up what he believed was South Africa's first home salt-water aquarium, an eight-foot-long tank containing, among other specimens he had caught, an octopus which he trained to climb up his arm to be fed.

After school, John attended the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg, but left without finishing his degree because of illness.   He  married Janice Lahner in 1969:

John and Janice  had two children, a son Jason and a daughter Candice.  He tragically lost his daughter in 1992.

John had a career with the Natal Provincial Administration as a mainframe computer programmer.   However he sometimes found time to accompany Buck Buchan-Smith as a trail guide on hiking expeditions to remote parts of Southern Africa.  John eventually became chief computer systems analyst for the province. Here he is earlier in his career:

And here is a rather later photo of all four generations of the Pears men, taken in 2005:

John followed the activities of Class of 1961 with interest.  He attended our 50th Reunion in Durban in 2011, where he was delighted to reconnect with classmates, some of whom had not seen for half a century.  Here he is at that event,  with classmate Louis Buckle:

Around this time John took early retirement, and then worked for several years in the front shop of his son Jason's butcher business on the Bluff.  He finally stopped work in 2018, when Jason emigrated to New Zealand.

John and Janice then moved to a retirement home at Widenham Hibiscus village on the South Coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal.  There he maintained an interest in wildlife and gardening, and was active in community affairs.

Unfortunately John had a fall in mid-2023  and was admitted to St Augustine hospital in Durban in a coma.  Doctors discovered that he had meningitis, which was likely the reason for the dizziness that led to the fall.  He failed to recover properly from this event, which was made worse by emphysema, and he passed away suddenly on 19 July 2023, from a heart attack.  John's memorial service was attended by a wide spectrum of people aged 20 to 90 --  ranging from lifelong friends, to staff from Widenham, to young people whose lives he had impacted.

John Pears is survived by Janice, his wife of almost 55 years, who remains at Widenham; his sister Lowell Bamber, who lives in Australia; and his son Jason and grandson Bronson, who live in New Zealand.

[Special thanks to Nick Gray, Buck Buchan-Smith,  and Jason Pears for their help with this In Memory notice]