Roddy Mills, 5 October 1958 - 18 May 2026

"My brother Roderick ‘Roddy’ Mills died peacefully at home in Rondebosch today.

Roddy was not only a big brother, but a role model, one that I struggled to entirely emulate. He was studiously quiet, self-effacing, dry-witted and possessed quite the most brilliant mind at understanding all things mechanical. Where electronics and valve timing remain a mystery to me, it was, for Roddy, a piece of pie. He was approachable, and methodical, someone who inherited our father’s attention to detail. Whereas life for me is big canvases and large daubs of colour, he was intrigued by the smallest details. And life, like mechanics, is all about the details.

Roddy was not only gifted with mechanical knowledge and understanding of how things worked, but he shone at driving things fast on the track. After pestering my father forever to purchase a second-hand kart, he (and to some extent, I) raised money by mowing lawns and buying, repairing and selling old motorcycles to be able to match my father’s contribution to the purchase of an old Blow Invader kart replete with a newish McCulloch 91B/1 from Fred and Charles White. This treasure came with a pile of broken engines, a foretaste of things to come.

We were keen to get out and racing, having been bitten hard by the bug courtesy of Roddy Turner Senior.

But, first, my father insisted that we rebuilt the trailer with which it came, and then the kart and, before turning a wheel, made one usable engine out of all the old bits. These were lessons in the meticulous way in which he approached everything.

With a borrowed crash-helmet from Tony Sandell, later our brother-in-law, Roddy startled everyone with his speed at Killarney first time out in late 1973. In his matric year, 1975, he tussled for the SA championship with Roddy Turner Junior, winning it the following year with a new Zip Shadow kart. He took in one World Championship for South Africa, and stayed with karting until 1998, a remarkable tenure of 25 years which spoke volumes about both his love for the sport and his competitiveness. We also rebuilt cars together, from Minis to Jaguars. It’s with some pride that we still own the 3.8 Mk II Jaguar that we bought for R100 in 1980 and completely rebuilt and prepared together for the start of the ‘classic cars’ class at Killarney.

After matriculating at Bishops in 1975, he completed a BSc (cum laude) at UCT and, later, a MSc on the ‘stabilisation of calcium carbonate deficient water’, a topic I only know after being asked to edit the tome. After his National Service in the Navy, during which time as a young sub-lieutenant he was put in charge of rebuilding the submarine syncro-lifts at Simon’s Town, Roddy went into business with my father. By his own admission, his temperament was not well suited to the hurly-burly of contracting, and later opened a car tuning and restoration business which he enjoyed enormously, as did his customers. His service reflected his care and personal interest in the character of the cars as much as anything.

The mark of any person is not what they did in their lives, but what they leave behind. Roddy leaves Carol, his partner of forty years, and their two boys, Matthew and Richard, one an architect, the other a PhD in applied maths. He was all of a Father, Husband, Son, Brother to Shelley and I, and gentle Uncle to his nephews and nieces. He will be remembered for his contribution to all our lives, his love and his generous care.

Roddy bore, as was his way, the burden of Motor Neuron Disease stoically. He never wanted anyone to make a fuss of his plight, as much as he was immensely grateful for the love he was shown in the process.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson offers us solace at moments like this, when we savour the relationship and mourn the individual. As he put it in:

‘Crossing the Bar’

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

It offers solace that Roddy is now at peace, or as he termed it recently about our parents, ‘resting’, in their company."

Greg Mills

18.05.2026

Details of a memorial to Roddy will be forwarded in due course.

The ODU and Bishops community send their deepest condolences to Carol, Matthew, Richard, Shelley, Greg and his nephews and nieces. 

RIP Roddy Mills.

Requiescat in Pace.