Farewell to Ronnie Lubner, who lived life large

MOIRA SCHNEIDER

“All he wanted to do, he said, was play the fool or play sports,” nephew Marc Lubner said of his uncle who passed away on 27 December in Plettenberg Bay. “He was apparently very good at sport.”

“I think it was during the under-16 championships for Southern Transvaal [that] he actually took a set off [tennis champion] Eric Sturgess. That was his claim to fame sports-wise. He always used to tell the story.

“It was a sport that he played throughout his life, and it used to be a point of social interaction wherever he went. He was a great sportsman, and his knowledge of sport was exceptional. He had a passion for sport of all kinds, particularly tennis and football.”

The company that Ronnie launched with son Gary, the Belron Group, at one stage sponsored the Chelsea Football Club, including the year that it won the Triple Crown. Under Gary, Belron, an international auto-glass replacement business, has grown to become the largest of its kind globally.

In spite of his success in business, Ronnie never lost the common touch. Journalist Suzanne Belling remembers that when she worked for his late brother, Bertie, in 1996, Ronnie used to move his chair to sit with the cleaners during office lunches. The siblings were then joint chief executives of the international PG Group started by their father, Morrie, in the early 1900s.

More recently, Ronnie is well known for having turned around The Houghton lifestyle development in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, which will constitute a “huge, huge” part of his legacy, Marc believes. The business had been started by others, with him being a mere investor, but when it got into trouble, Ronnie intervened.

“He paid off all the creditors, and invested an enormous amount of his own money into what really is an iconic development,” he relates. “He took it upon himself to complete the project.

“I believe it’s going to be the premier conference facility in the northern suburbs.”

Marc recalls that Ronnie had the ability to use humour to engage with others. “He would walk into a meeting, and immediately set the scene by telling jokes. That would put people very much at ease with him – then he would get to the business of the day.

“What a lot of people missed, however, was that underlying that humour there was often a very serious message. You had to be quite astute to listen to it and not think that the guy was just continuing to play the fool.

“He was certainly an intellect – it wasn’t stupid humour, and it was never crude.

“He had this expression that he was well known for. When people used to say, ‘Will you come back to me?’ on a particular matter or investment opportunity, he used to say, ‘Well if the phone doesn’t ring, you know it’s me!’”

When Ronnie was checking into hospital two days before he died, a nurse told the family afterwards that she had greeted him, saying, “Oh Mr Lubner, nice to meet you!” His response was, “Yes, I know it is.”

Marc remembers a piece of advice that Ronnie gave him in his early days that he has never forgotten. “There was a particular issue that I was battling with. Ronnie took me up to his bedroom, and started to show me what the perfect golf swing was. It had a long follow through.

“He said to me, ‘I’m just going to give you one tip. Like in golf, you have to have that long follow through.’ You can start with a great idea, but you need to follow through with it otherwise it just remains a great idea.”

He was also notorious for his handshake, Marc says. “If you put your hand out to shake his, he would swerve his hand so that you missed it.”

In addition to his jocular persona, Ronnie was “incredibly polite. He was also incredibly generous towards staff that he did well with,” he says, mentioning a houseman who had been in his employ for more than 35 years.

“Ronnie was the type of guy who would give you a task to do, make sure you understood the task, and make sure that you understood that if you took on that task, you’d better deliver. If you delivered, you would be very handsomely rewarded.

“If you didn’t, you’d be given one chance to fix it up, and if you didn’t, you weren’t given too many more. I very rarely heard him raise his voice, yet the words that he used could cut me down to size very quickly.”

As for philanthropy, Ronnie contributed “very generously”, primarily to the Progressive Jewish movement as his wife, Rhona, was a “very devout” adherent. He was also a “very strong” supporter of the Selwyn Segal Society for the Jewish Handicapped, as well as the Arcadia Children’s Home, both of which his late mother had been very actively involved in, says Marc.

An offshoot of Selwyn Segal, the Morrie and Bella Lubner Kibbutz, was a farm bought by Bertie and Ronnie in honour of their parents. They populated it with some of the higher-functioning kids from Selwyn Segal, who worked in the factory making a number of Jewish foodstuffs.

Ronnie was also a supporter of Afrika Tikkun. “With his money, we built the Ronnie and Rhona Lubner Children’s Centre in Alexandra township run by Afrika Tikkun,” says Marc, chief executive of the organisation.

The early childhood and youth-development centre caters for about 4 000 kids a day.

Ronnie’s wife, Rhona, predeceased him by three months. He leaves three children: Gary, Joanne, and Derek.

•     A memorial service for the late Ronnie Lubner is scheduled to be held at the Houghton Golf Club on Thursday, 17 January, at 18h00, on what would have been his 85th birthday.