Frederick Abinger (Tom) Warder - the world’s "most famous Hemochromatosis patient."

Frederick Abinger (Tom) Warder (May 25, 1925 – 9 July 1992), the world’s "most famous Hemochromatosis patient," was also an athlete, a musician and an inventor whose expertise in the field of mechanical electrical and gyroscopic instrumentation was acknowledged internationally.

Tom Warder was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Today he is known to have been the catalyst, together with his then newly-diagnosed daughter, for his wife's establishment of the Canadian Hemochromatosis Society in 1980,the Haemochromatosis Society of South Africa,1987, the International Association of Haemochromatosis Societies and affiliated Hemochromatosis societies around the world. He was also, among other things, a self-taught musician and band leader, a swimmer, an inventor, and was said to to have possessed remarkable physical strength, until the genetic disorder which causes the body to accumulate too much iron caught up with him, crippling his hands and finally causing his death.

Reminiscing about the time when they were both "servers" at St Boniface Church in Germiston, and referring to Warder's splendid physique, a friend who later became the rector of an East Rand church recalls that Warder once made a "magnificent Roman centurion in a Passion Play!” He also contributes the information that, by organizing monthly dances, both in the Church Hall, and in the "Rec" centre of a gold mine in the vicinity, Warder's band helped to raise enough money to build All Saints' Anglican Church in the nearby parish of Primrose.


An announcement issued by former filmmaker Eugene Boyko, in 1992, best sums up the association with Hemochromatosis - the world's most common inherited disease.

A memorial service for Tom Warder — the world's best-known hemochromatosis patient — will be held at St. David's Anglican Church in Tsawwassen at 2 pm on Wednesday, August 12, 1992.

"More than a month after his death in Johannesburg on July 9, during a farewell visit to South Africa, tributes continue to arrive at his Surrey home and Hemochromatosis offices in many countries, from people around the world; people who owe their lives and those of their families to a man who, for 25 years, courageously fought the ravages of the most common but little-known inherited disorder which results in an overload of iron in the body; a man who, together with his newly-diagnosed daughter, became the catalyst for the establishment of the Canadian Hemochromatosis society and many other similar organizations which now constitute the International Association of Hemochromatosis Societies.

"For the past 12 years, as he helped his wife, Marie, to promote awareness of hemochromatosis, Tom appeared as what he termed "Exhibit A” on numerous television programs in Canada and overseas -- the most recent of which was the interview with Eve Savory on the CBC program, NewsWorld. He was interviewed more than once by Deb Hope of BCTV, and has been the subject of dozens of radio, newspaper and magazine interviews including an article in MacLean's in October 1986. His story is told in the book, "The Bronze Killer," which was mentioned in the citation for the Canada Volunteer Medal of Honour and Certificate of Honour presented to his wife in Ottawa in 1991.


"Before his death, he was delighted to be among the patients treated at the recently-established Hemochromatosis Clinic, Shaughnessy site in Vancouver, which came into being as a result of the tireless campaigning on the part of his wife and family, and he lived to hear the Director-General of the Department of Genetic Services in South Africa, the country of his birth, announce the start of an intensive program of awareness.

"Hemochromatosis is ten times more common than other well-known genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis. It is the only inherited disorder of which the complications, which include diabetes, arthritis, cirrhosis of the liver, and a host of other involvements, are preventable by early diagnosis and treatment. Untreated it is fatal. In Tom Warder's case, diagnosis came too late, but, because of him, many people around the world (and their families) will live."

THE MUSICIAN

Tom’s parents, were said to have been able to "bring tears to one’s eyes" as a classical string duo, but once their sons came along, they preferred to play dance music with them. Leicester (Pop) Warder was an incredible swing, boogie and ragtime player (Marie, Tom's wife, would later confess that she could never master the ' boogie' bass of 'Alligator Crawl' the way Leicester could) and Rae, the mother of the family could easily have been mistaken for Stéphane Grappelli, the French jazz violinist who, with guitarist Django Reinhardt, founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France.

The fact that the Warders could create a sound resembling that, especially in a era when the Hot Club of France (probably the most famous of all string jazz bands) was in its heyday, was the secret of their enormous popularity, and Tom - young as he was - had already, fortuitously, begun to take his father's place as the leader before, lying about his age, he enlisted in the SAAF. It was a foregone conclusion and he was prepared for this upon his return home, but not for the manner in which it came about.

He and his brother, Selby, had no sooner returned to civilian life, when this very close family was shaken by an indescribable disaster, and for his fianceé to have to step into the breach and take Leicester Warder’s place at the piano – only three weeks after his sudden death, only three weeks after she and Tom, then only 21, had become engaged – was a daunting experience for his 18-year-old daughter-in-law-to-be. She rose to the challenge, however, and ended up playing with Tom and his band for 35 years!

Considered one of the finest swing mandolin players in the world at that time, Tom Warder was also one of the first to electrify an acoustic mandolin. In years to come, until his hands were crippled by Hemochromatosis, he would become the inventor of the "Gyroscope Brake" for aircraft, and also of the incubator in which sick children were conveyed by South African Airways, for treatment by the legendary heart- surgeon, Christiaan Barnard, frequently accompanying them on the flight.


The Band of 27 Squadron SAAF Left to right:"Lofty" Tarr, Holly White, Ginger Baine, Tom Warder, Selby Warder, "Frikkie" Webb. This group - the "unofficial" band of the squadron - was named for their Ventura aircraft, used to protect shipping around the Cape of Good Hope, and to bomb Italian shipping in the Mediterranean. The picture, taken in front of the French Foreign Legion headquarters in Oran, shows the group standing on desert sand, Tom on the right of the drummer, with his brother, Selby beside him) and because of where they are, there is no piano. Instead, the pianist, Holly White, plays the accordion.

"Birzebbugia Boogie" was spontaneously created and first played in 1944 by Tom Warder and THE VENTURIANS on the back of an army truck between Birzebbugia and the SAAF camp in Malta during WW2. Herewith a reference - taken from the book With no remorse...!-- to the three-month-long voyage on the Monarch of Bermuda, from Durban to the war zone (a voyage during which a number of those on board died), and later on the island of Malta: ….

“What had kept them sane in the suffocating, foul-smelling lower deck of the ‘Monarch’ was music, and what seemed to glue them together still, on Malta, was music. Men of different ranks played together in their band which they called ‘The Venturians’, out of affection for their Ventura aircraft and, later in Malta, as they were taken from their billets to the airfield and back, or just riding around the city, a group of them would inevitably be playing on the back of the truck that transported them.

"They raised our spirits every time we heard them go by; singing everything from "Sarie Marais" to "When You're Smilin'," "Bye, bye blues," "I can’t give you anything but love, baby!" – and including the occasional, rousing rendition of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." When it happened to be "Hold him down, you Zulu Warrior!" the thumping rhythm of their feet was carried to us on the breeze; long before we were able even to hear the lively chorus of upraised voices; long before they came in sight”

THE INVENTOR

After his discharge from the SAAF, where he had already begun to make a name for himself during WW2 as an instrument technician, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. Apart from marrying and having a family, he wanted to become an "gyro expert". He joined South African Airways and there was given the opportunity of undergoing extensive training with many other airlines includig Qantas and Ansett Ana in Astralia, Lufthansa in Hambrg, Germany, United in the USA) Boeing and Airtbus in Toulouse, as well as manufacturers of flight instrumnets such as Sperry, Delco Electronics - and others in several countries too numerous to list. A time would come when he would be invited to demonstrate his own inventions.

Before leaving South Africa in 1975 he had for some years been seconded by his airline to the Technical College in Johannesburg as a tutor, lecturer and examiner for the training of apprentices, and his resume stood him in good stead when he immigrated to Canada where he was to find that a letter of recommendation had been sent aheard by Colonel Stanley Walters of Sperry in Johannesburg. This gained him an entré.

Warder's inventions were invariably inspired to by a desire to overcome what he saw as an immediate need; for instance, the devices he constructed to enable his wife to carry on with her work as a writer and public relations officer for an leading international company, while trapped in a body cast for many months. These were later donated to a clinic, and would prove to be the prototypes for others still in use.

 

Among his many other inventions, these stand out:

The incubator

Translation of incubator text:

"For some years South African Airways have been using an incubator for transporting tiny babies who require a precise amount of oxygen and heat just to be kept alive during the journey.

"Recently the urgent need for a larger incubator, for the transport of children older than a year, became became very clear. As a temporary measure, Mr Tommy Warder of the Instrument shop, designed and built an incubator out of pieces of scrap metal which were already available in the workshop.
"The framework fits neatly into the floor and has proved to be so successful that the Dept. of Flight Medicine has decided to retain it as a permanent fixture for the transport of older children."
[During the Christiaan Barnard Era, children from around the world were brought to South Africa for heart surgery, and Tom Warder often accompanied them on the flight. While Barnard is mainly associated with transplantation, numerous patients afflicted with other heart defects flocked to the famed Grootte Schuur Hospital, then, and still do so today.]

The "gyro" brake

Tom Warder was the first to introduce a gyroscope brake into airline navigation.

“Airline delays will be shorter now." Kempton News, December 15, 1972.

“Much time and inconvenience to passengers and crew of South African Airways will be saved by a new device designed by a Kemptonian, Mr. Tom Warder of Kempton Park. In actual fact, his invention will also save time for other airlines all over the world once his idea has been released by SAA.

“Although Mr. Warder was not available for comment and his idea is still confidential, Kempton News has it on good authority that the manufacturers of gyros as well as almost every airline in the world are interested…”
[Gyroscopes are, of course, used in navigation instruments in ships, planes, and rockets and South African Airways was the first airline to benefit by the “spectacular invention" which saved the airline millions in the days when the gyros used to 'topple' after landing on the island of Ilha da Sal on the way to Europe and North America.]

Tom's father, Leicester Philip Warder has been credited with the invention of the prototype of the Grease Belt method used for sorting diamonds in Kimberley, South Africa, many years ago, and I have it on good authority that General Smuts had been advised of this. Another source has it that Warder senior had also invented a revolutionary fuel aspiration device in the early 1930s, far superior to anything that had been used up to that time, but, as the story goes, it was unfortunately bought out by some oil company, only to suppress it.

Be that as it may, it was definitely as a result of spending so much time with his father in his workshop while the latter was involved in creating what was always referred to as "The Gadget" (designed to overcome gravity), that the young Tom became fascinated with Gyroscopics at an early age.

World's first finger-removable bottle top

The pop top machine prototype

"Easy does it! A crown cap for beer, soft-drink and other bottles, which can be removed easily with the fingers, has been developed by Tom and Selby Warder, two South African inventors, and an American associate, Peter Amato, and is available through De Solla agencies, Johannesburg"

Once the news concerning the possibility of converting conventional Crown Cork's into the finger-removable "PopTops" was circulated, inquiries came in from interested parties around the world. Numerous samples were demanded, and promptly had to be dispatched to the USA and elsewhere almost daily. That, in turn, meant that samples had to be made ready after Tom came home, from work each day, and so, each night, before the family went to bed, large quantities of 'regular' caps were fed into the machine, and once it was switched on, the steady thump-thump went on all night. Their good-natured neighbors endured that part of the procedure graciously, but, unfortunately, as it started to vibrate, the machine would somehow propel itself forward until it reached the garage door, where, once it began to bang against the metal, it created a din that was enough to wake the dead! However, when the most interested company was unable to come up with the technology to convert its existing, conventional, crown corks into what he and his brother had registered as the "POP TOP." Tom was pleased to be able to advise that he had already built such a machine...

Nevertheless, although this proved to be an unqualified success, once again history repeated itself. The project was bought out, only to be suppressed – and the name, POP TOP, was purchased from the Warder brothers by a well-known brewing company, for the launch of a new brew – soon to be sold in cans with the recently invented 'pull-tab!'

EPILOGUE

A tragic end to an amazing life.

On September 3, 1939, Britain declared war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II in Europe, and by Wednesday 6 September 1939, South Africa, too, had entered the fray. General,later Field Marshall Jan Smuts had been the leader of the opposition, but during an emergency sitting of parliament he defeated the old Boer War General, James Barrie Hertzog, by 84 votes to 67. Hitler, it is said, laughed when he heard that South Africa had declared war on Germany. (Neither his sense of geography nor history could have been very well developed!) Without the Cape sea-lane the Allies would not have held Egypt, the Middle East or India. Probably, and ironically, the Mediterranean would have been lost. Perhaps Russia too, as the Axis swept up from perhaps what was then Persia, through the back door. Pearl Harbour might have been unnecessary for the Japanese if they had taken India, thus —according to experts — there would have been no USA involvement. June 1997.

Despite low numbers, the South African Springboks bundled the Italians out of Abyssinia in months, also thus probably saving Egypt, the Middle East, and India. (The only Allied victory in the opening years of the war.) This enabled O'Connor to drive the Italians out of Libya (only to be chased out in turn by Rommel). For all Hitler’s derision, the South Africans went on to do yeoman work. There were Saffers in the RAF, South Africans in the Royal Navy; even on the county class cruiser which chased the Graff Spee in the River Plate.

There would be many heroes among the forces of every allied country; and no doubt the young Tom Warder, who had been dreaming of glory since he was fourteen years old, hoped that he, too, would be given opportunities to distinguish himself. According to his great-uncle Abinger, the ‘Abinger’ part, had come down through the generations from Sir James Scarlett, first Baron of Abinger, somehow associated with a place near London called ‘Abinger Hammer’; yet, from the moment he was born, he was known as ‘Tom’ (for “Tom Thumb”) because at birth he was small enough to fit into a shoebox.

The ship was already almost bursting at the seams when, just before his nineteenth birthday, he strode up the gangplank in Durban to board the Monarch of Bermuda, the ship about which Sir Dirk Bogarde the British actor and novelist later observed in his book Cleared for Take-off that, “among a good number of 'louts”, were an equal number of “gentler, bewildered men who had been drawn willy-nilly into a world beyond all comprehension”, but for this lad there was nothing 'willy-nilly' about it. Displaying the familiar orange tabs denoting a South African volunteer, kitbag slung over shoulder and carrying a mandolin, Tom Warder was eager and excited to be on the way to rejoining 27 Squadron SAAF ‘Up North’ — as his countrymen referred to the war zone. The Christian writer, Oswald Chambers once remarked that ‘songbirds sing in the dark', and with the mental picture of Bogarde’s ‘steaming hell’ now before one, it seems doubtful that the young Warder played the mandolin for any other reason.

This was indeed the moment he had been waiting for and yet, as he would later confess, there was a tug at his heart that made him, at the same time, reluctant to leave. Less than three weeks earlier, while on embarkation leave, he had walked into a newspaper office and met a girl, a 16-year-old cub reporter. For him it had been love at first sight and, as Charles Magill would be quoted as saying in the October 1995 edition of the Canadian Reader's Digest, as well as in La Tueuse du bronze (Selection (Quebec) and the South African Reader's Digest in November of that year, “dashing in his airforce uniform and extraordinarily handsome, with a deep tan and a magnificent physique, he had caught her eye at once. One day, she had told a co-worker, she would marry this man.”

Trailing behind him as they embarked on that chilly day in 1944, came his brother carrying a kitbag and a guitar. Though older by nearly three years, he was always the one who followed; Tom, the six-foot-something sibling (who had stretched the truth somewhat concerning his age so that they could enlist, one behind the other, on the same day) was the leader. He was the athletic one of whom it was said that he would have swum in the Olympics if the war had not intervened. The one who had spent hours sailing his small sailboat and loved the outdoors.

As has already been said, the brothers had music in their very DNA. They came from a home where someone was always playing some instrument or another. The family had their own, popular dance orchestra, and, since joining the South African Airforce two years previously, the ‘Warder Boys’ had taken their instruments with them everywhere. They had made music wherever they had been stationed, and once a plane had been sent to fetch a piano to complement the squadron’s band. The brothers had made a vow that, even if one of them were to be sick or wounded, nothing would be allowed to separate them. Tom kept that promise assiduously, even refusing promotion until they were home from the front.

If it was trying for every one of 3,000-plus soldiers to be cooped up down below, it was especially claustrophobic to have to sleep, hemmed in with hundreds in the Monarch’s once famous swimming pool. It was bitterly ironic for a world-class swimmer. Without water in the pool, its walls made of it an airless cage. The vessel had cast off from Durban in comparatively cool weather, but, as it crossed the equator and proceeded north, late autumn very soon gave way to stifling summer.

Many became ill from food that ‘went off' because it could not be properly stored. Dodging enemy submarines in unbearable, humid temperatures, the longer-than-normal voyage seemed endless. So, following in the tradition set by Irving Berlin’s troupe, and the many other musicians who had been on board the Monarch when it was dubbed the ‘SHOWBOAT’, those who could, now played music. (In May 1947, two months before the birth of Tom’s first child, word went out that the Monarch had been destroyed by fire at Hebburn-on-Tyne while being reconditioned for its return to passenger service.)

Like their grandparents, the grandchildren, award-winner singer-actress Melissa van der Schyff, and her brother, Dylan van der Schyff, an internationally acclaimed percussionist who makes his home in Vancouver, also have music in their genes. In song Melissa recalls the stories she and her brother have known for as long as they can remember; stories that fascinated them as completely as they had gripped their mother and uncle when they were young. She relives happy times with a gentle man who had come to join them in Canada because he loved them as much as they loved him. Not for them any mundane nursery rhyme. Again and again they clamoured to hear, ‘the one about The Monarch of Bermuda.’ He never told them about the misery, about the rotten, hard-boiled eggs that had turned green, or how some of the men were dead before they reached their destination. Only the funny parts. About how he and his brother gave a concert one night and blew all the lights on the ship with their cranked up sound equipment; about the pandemonium that ensued and about how everyone was terrified, thinking they had been torpedoed.

Saying nothing about the vicissitudes of war, he told them about how he had swum in the Mediterranean off the coast of Oran, but not, until they were older, about how he and a friend had brought the body of an American soldier ashore. He sang the songs that he and his brother had sung on the ship, and played the tunes they had played in the squadron band — named The Venturians because they flew ‘Venturas’. His youthful listeners thrilled to hear about how he had once or twice had a chance to play with some famous musicians including Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller; but he was never able to talk much about how pilots, returning from anti-submarine reconnaissance to the hopelessly too short emergency airstrip at Kalafrana in Malta, on occasion misjudged the distance to the precipice at the edge of the towering cliffs.

The Warder Boys came home from the war in Europe, having signed up for further service in Burma; Tom to court his girl while they waited to be shipped out to the Far East. Fortuitously, before the order came for them to leave, peace returned to their world on V J Day. Tom joined a commercial airline, married and settled down to raise a family, remaining fiercely proud of his squadron. After emigrating from South Africa in 1978, he joined the Royal Canadian Legion and became a member of the Army Navy and Airforce Veterans’ Association, retaining life membership of the South African Airforce Association. He gave his time, his energy and his money passionately, however, to help his wife establish an organization which has saved millions of lives in Canada and around the world by creating awareness of the most common genetic disorder of all: ‘Hemochromatosis’.

He has been described by physicians and patients alike as the ‘most courageous man’ they have ever known. When, with dreadful suddenness, that same genetic disorder caught up with him and he learnt that he was dying, he was faced with two almost overwhelming problems … He might not have time to write 'The Story of the Monarch', as he had promised the children; and the kind of money which a funeral might entail, was frozen in South Africa. Desperately he turned to the Canadian Legion and was advised to apply to Veterans Affairs in Vancouver, which he did — one cold rainy afternoon in April 1992. He stood patiently, dripping wet, until his turn came to state his case to the clerk behind the counter.

“I’m sorry,” said the young man, politely but firmly, shaking his head. “South Africa was never in the war!”

But, sick as he was, Tom Warder did not give up readily. His immediate need was great, but what was more important, his pride had been stung. He tried repeatedly to have his medals, discharge papers and other records of active service recognized. They were deemed to be inadequate, however, on the grounds that, although the month and the year were given, the exact dates of arrival and departure from war zones — for example, South West Africa (now Namibia), Oran and Malta — were not specified. Six weeks after his first visit to Veterans’ Affairs in Vancouver, in a greatly weakened state but determined to have his evidence validated, he managed, by utilizing his airline privileges, to make it back to South Africa. He followed up correspondence, sent ahead by him from Canada, with a personal visit to the records office in Pretoria. From there the necessary documentation was mailed to Canada, but he did not live long enough to know the outcome. He died in South Africa on July 9, 1992. Relevant documents were recently found among his personal papers—too late for his case to be resolved. One official document shows that his records had indeed been received; however, after 18 years his Canadian file is still marked ‘PENDING’.

NOTES

A reference to 27 Squadron SAAF is found in the book With no remorse…! but it is difficult to establish whether this batch of South Africans comprised a different squadron or were a belatedly-arrived part of the one already stationed on the island. Records include mention of their “rejoining” a unit" - but that could have meant that they had already met up again in North Africa with the one with which they had formerly served; however it is most likely that they were linked to the RAF. What is indeed known is that they had “sub hunted ” along the Southern shores of South Africa from their base at Fisantekraal in the Cape, after having been on anti-submarine patrol along the Atlantic Coast from Rooikop in South West Africa (now Namibia.) They talked with pride about an O.C. called Thuys Uys whom they had known there and of whom a great deal was heard in connection with the daring rescue of the more than 100 passengers and crew of the British passenger liner, Dunedin Star, off Skeleton Coast - one of the most frightening places on earth for a ship to be wrecked, and certainly the most barren.

[The DUNEDIN STAR, ran aground at the Skeleton Coast of then South West Africa in 1942.
When the call for aid came from the helpless men, women and children, marooned on the desert beach, the men of the South African Naval Forces, the Air Forces, the Army and Police and the Administration for Railways and Harbours and even the Royal Navy got together to organize this amazing rescue operation.]

Finally embarking on the Monarch of Bermuda for the North African war, zone, they had no sooner set sail for Alexandria, from Durban, before the sea voyage turned into a nightmare that would last three months before they reached their destination. As already been said, by the time they arrived in Egypt, having zigzagged all the way up the east coast to avoid torpedoes, a number of their companions, had died.

About The Monarch of Bermuda: Some of the most graphic descriptions of what conditions were like on such a troopship are those provided by Dirk Bogarde. He tells that he returned to “home and beauty” on the Monarch of Bermuda and that the “Evening Express" announced their arrival in the United Kingdom, all 2600 of them, as “the largest batch for “demob” in one ship”. Bearing in mind that the vessel had been built to carry 1286, his wry observation that “it was a tight squeeze,” is a fine example of British understatement.

He had left England on the hastily converted Carthage into which, he says, “hundreds and hundreds of us were forced like dates in a box, side by side and just as sticky!” The war in Europe was over by the time he left for Bombay to pursue the war against Japan; but there seems to have been no decrease in the numbers aboard. Even though he was an officer, he was assigned and obliged to share, for two months and with seven others, a cabin designed for two and having only one outside porthole. When various duties obliged him to descend to the “steaming hell” of the lower decks, his quarters must have seemed like the Ritz by contrast. In “Cleared for Take-off”, the last volume in his autobiographical series, his description of the scene down below is graphic … "There, ranged in swinging hammocks, in almost constant darkness, the OR’s or other ranks were forced to spend the time. The smell there was dreadful,” he goes on to say, “of unwashed bodies and feet, of farts and vomit.” According to him, there was nothing for anyone to do, apart from a few daily duties, and rest periods were “agonizingly painful, lonely and long.”

From a different perspective, some almost unbelievable yet true accounts paint a ghastly picture of what internees had to endure in the lower parts of the Monarch while being transported from Britain to other parts of the Empire. Their stories are appalling enough, but it seems completely inconceivable that Allied troops, risking their lives for what they believed would make the world a better place, should have been subjected to such unendurable hardship on troopships before they even reached the battlefront. There were those for whom the ordeal would come to an end with disembarkation in a war zone, only to be repeated on their way home. “Some servicemen and women would go home maimed or blind – and some not at all,” is the opinion voiced by Marie Warder, the author of With no remorse… " but I still cannot reconcile myself to the fact that there were others for whom their outward journey would remain the worst memory of their war-time experience."