Sonja Eleanor Young was born in Kroonstad on 10th November 1958.
Due to her father’s work at the time where he needed to travel a lot, Sonja spent her schooling years at various schools. Once completed, she started work at Kroonstad Volkskas Bank, she eventually got a transfer to Cape Town and thereafter started work at the Goodwood Fire and Rescue services, where she remained about 23 years, until her retirement.
Sonja met Hugh on Sonja’s daughter, Karen’s, birthday, a first date for them, on 31 January 2009. They were both very techno minded at that stage as they were on the same dating APP, where a mutual friend had introduced them. Their second date was on 1st February (the next day) and Hugh proposed to her on 1 May 2009 and they got married on the 6 June 2009. They had been together for 16 wonderful years.
Hugh had 2 passions when he met Sonja, one was Amateur Radio, the other Rallies. Their first valentine’s day together, went like this: –
It was romantic…Hugh had won a romantic dinner at some real fancy restaurant on the evening of Valentine’s Day. Hugh being the gentleman as he is, contacted them and said they could kindly donate it to some other deserving couple as he is already busy at that time.
Hugh being the dedicated Ham and Rally enthusiast coerced Sonja to join him for the rally that he wanted to assist with on that ‘romantic’ day.
To her detriment, she agreed and off they went. Hugh was Chief radio at that rally, and one can never be too sure what transpires at Rallies. This one was one where extra marshals were required and being as resourceful as Hugh was at that time, he volunteered Sonja to stand in and assist. Her task was at a downhill, flying finish end of stage, collect the papers from the navigator and bring to the end stage control marshal. What she of course very quickly learnt was that rally cars race on gravel. Where there is gravel and cars, there is dust and where there are rally cars and gravel, there is even more dust. Needless to say, this was the start of Sonjas and Hugh’s rally days together. She was at Hugh’s side every rally thereafter, until his retirement in 2020. She enjoyed rallying as much as he did and built wonderful friendships through the sport.
Hugh made up for the Valentine’s Day dust storm and the restaurant told Hugh that they could come enjoy the Valentine’s Day dinner the week after, on 20 February. A great peace offering!
There are many similar stories that Hugh could entertain us with, but this is the most memorable for him.
Last year, Sonja had some treatments and then an operation to try to remove a tumour. Unfortunately, this was not successful, and she passed away peacefully on Sunday, 11 January 2026.
Published by: Patrick Vermaak
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