Neva J sang the song, ‘We Are Marching To Pretoria,’ often and with gusto during my formative years. It seemed to be a song of inspiration in the 1960s and a motivational song for her to sing to inspire me.

Billy B understood when he heard Neva J sing the Marching song that it was time to get up and get going and do what a good man or boy needed to do. Excuses were plentiful but results were what she required.

Marching to Pretoria was a popular song in the ’60s and was in several school books and sung in music classes of the day.

‘The women’s March took place on 9 August 1956 in Pretoria, South Africa. The marchers’ aims were to protest the introduction of the Apartheid pass laws for black women in 1952 and the presentation of a petition to the then Prime Minister J.G. Strijdom.’

For Neva J the song’s meaning was to get up and make something happen. This included working by the sweat of your brow on many occasions. Manual labor was often referred to as the chosen career for untold midwesterners. College was not our first goal and perhaps not our second or third. There were the coal mines, farming, and many factories in our region where men and women obtained their wages every Friday.

The march to Pretoria was synonymous with our shared march through life with all of its vacillating vicissitudes and vagaries. Through the good times and those which are not so good we march on. Life is movement. Success is getting back up after you are knocked down.

Own your actions even those that in retrospect may embarrass you a bit. If what you have done represents who you are then it is original and unique.

There is no road map…there is the march to Pretoria…