NEWS

The Reverend Jack Williams.   Head Master 1968 - 1986

Passed away unexpectedly on Tuesday 30th December 2008

Enid, Stephen , Richard and family would like to thank all the many Old Rishworthians for their cards, good wishes and generous contributions to the Southport Spinal Injuries Unit. It is comforting to know that Jack touched so many lives in such a positive way and that there are so many fond memories of him that you have shared with us

A Tribute to Jack by Stephen and Richard

Delivered at Jack's Funeral Service 

Dad had a great talent for people.

He loved people and especially talking to them.

He would have loved to be here to talk to each and every one of you so we hope you can all meet us in the Bulkeley later. There will be refreshments, in the restaurant, and an open bar as Dad would have loved to buy you all a drink.

He would talk to anybody and everybody. At times this made us squirm with embarrassment – what family secret would he reveal next? What family anecdote would he come up with?

Or when would his multi-lingual bluff be called? He had about 20 words of Welsh but when talking to a stranger would act as if he were fluent. He developed this into an effective way of confusing timeshare touts!

Not only Welsh but Italian – when we visited Genoa on Mum and Dad’s 25th Wedding Anniversary we stayed with good friend and talented linguist, Arthur Lomas. For Dad wine and food were always “Bellisimo” and on our last evening, to a waiter, he even managed a “Prego”. Dad loved and often repeated Arthur’s parting comment:
“What a pity you’re leaving just when you’ve mastered the language”.

Then there was French – on the same trip Richard and I were booked into a hotel as ‘”mon deux grand filles” – his two large daughters.

He hated gossip and was good at keeping secrets, never betraying a confidence – when Mary and I got engaged he was the first person we told and we asked him not to tell anyone yet – and he didn’t, not even Mum and so we had the pleasure of breaking our news.

During his carers’ morning visits, Dad would talk non-stop. I’m told at least one of them devised the threat of showering him in the face just to get a word in!

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People were an important part of his professional life both as a priest and a headmaster.

He was first appointed curate at Buckley, where he met Mum, as we’ll hear later.

He went to theological college in Llandaff and was ordained a priest in St Asaph Cathedral.

He was appointed vicar of Deganwy, then Bettisfield in Shropshire, and then Rishworth. After a brief move to Batley he returned to Rishworth as Chaplain prior to being made Headmaster.

His gift was communication and he was a wonderful speaker: from the pulpit, at school assembly or on any public platform.

He would spend hours and hours thinking through sermons – most recently on Llanddona beach walking Sam, his Springer spaniel. He was once so deep in thought that Sam knocked him over when running past him; injuring his already dodgy knees; he had to crawl back to the car and ended up in Ysbyty Gwynedd!

But all that thought would lead to a simple, clear and brief message.

In this message he would often refer to Christian love, and to those he loved. Sometimes, with subtle, or not so subtle, references to the family he would make us squirm, and he loved every minute of it. But his congregation would listen and would remember. He believed that the power of the Holy Spirit could be felt though a good sermon.

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In 1968, with his appointment as headmaster, Rishworth School became co-educational and under his management the school prospered.

It was a huge part of his life. He considered it a 24 hour job. He drew together a fantastic team of colleagues to share his ethos: to develop each pupil and member of staff to his or her full potential.

He loved the camaraderie of the staff room.

He earned the respect of the governors, staff, pupils and parents with his honesty, integrity and strong moral code. He was always true to his word, and made full use of his gift for communication – even using Sam the dog as an early warning system for pupils “holding hands” under the arches!

I never heard him speak badly of anyone, and he always tried to see the good in people. He put faith in people – pupils and staff – in the hope that faith and trust would be rewarded by the development of the individual.

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Stephen and I were often asked what it was like to have a father for headmaster. We would always say: “It wasn’t a problem. If you knew him you would understand”.

How could we live a normal school life, making friends with both pupils and teachers alike? It was always one of Dad’s concerns.

At home he was our Dad. He would never ask us for information about school, and he would never talk about school problems with us. In all our time there it was never a problem, and that speaks volumes about the respect and trust we all had for him.

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Dad had a great talent for fun.

As a younger man this would manifest itself in sport and student antics.

Never one for singing his own praises, a few details of his sporting prowess were revealed over the years.

He played hockey for Deeside Ramblers as centre forward; always claiming that most of his goals were scored with miss-hits, but he played to a high standard and was a reserve for Wales.

Hockey gave him a useful survival mechanism during his national service with the RAF: as the only lower rank in the team, he had officers’ privileges, and avoided most of the drills and spud bashing.

It was also rumoured (by him) that he played soccer for Wrexham reserves.

Other sports practiced as a student included swimming and climbing: by swimming I mean skinny dipping in Bangor Pool having sneaked in with his mates; and by climbing I mean climbing up one of the towers of the Menai Bridge to help write “HANDS OFF WALES” in big white letters on the stonework.

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He was a proud Welshman and had a passion for Welsh Rugby. As an ex-pat living in Rishworth during the golden years, he loved the rugby banter with his colleagues at school, and he always had hope, no, faith that the golden years would return. I’m so glad he was able to enjoy Wales’ recent successes.

His rugby passion would spill over onto the touchline where he was a very vocal supporter , and he was once banned from the touchline at school because both he and Sam the dog were barking too much!

As a referee himself he had a reputation for zero tolerance of bad language which became well known by all the opposing teams!

He loved the Welsh mountains. From our cottage in Dolwyddelen he would take us rambling. Something would always happen: we’d often take a “Williams” route (a euphemism for getting lost). He once knocked himself out by walking into a rock on the Glyders – he was convinced it was the cantilever although for that to have happened he would have needed to be 10 feet tall! He was to us! His worst mountain memory was losing his car keys at the top of Tryfan – only realising when down at the car park in Ogwen. Up he went again and, with the “luck of the Williams’”, found them at the top.

In his youth Dad was a talented violinist. At 17 he won a prize at the National Eisteddfod and was then offered a place with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra. How different things would have been if he had accepted!

Classical music remained a big part of his life: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart were his favourites and anything more modern was only tolerated if he had found the CDs in a cut price bin.

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Fun and laughter were an integral part of our family life, as I am sure they were when he was boy: even though times were tough. He was born in Wrexham in 1926 a couple of months before the general strike and his mother Emmie and father Bill had to make many sacrifices just to feed him. But with their support and dedication he gained a place at Grove Park Grammar School and then Bangor University. Mum went to Bangor too, but not at the same time.

They met in Buckley when he was curate. Their first date was during Lent and he needed special permission from the vicar as Lent was strictly observed. He always said the only regret of his married life was never to have seen Mum in the Buckley Pantomime. She played leading lady for several years, but it was always during Lent and he couldn’t go.

There was a huge turn-out for the wedding; to their amazement most of the parish turned up and the church was full to overflowing. They both look so happy in the photographs and they shared a wonderful life together, through Buckley, Deganwy, Bettisfield to Rishworth, Cragg Vale and then Llangoed.; and were married for nearly 53 years.

He loved her so much, and she loves him. That love for each other underpinned a wonderful loving family upbringing which Richard and I shared.

Every morning, Dad brought Mum a cup of tea to bed, and Richard and I would always sit in bed with Mum having tea and dunking biscuits.

Dad used to say:
“Love is… tea in the morning”

He also used to say “You never regret an extravagance”. He would use that as an excuse to buy something for Mum. Mind you, he liked a bargain, and Grandma used to say that he would have bought a kilt if it were half price.

Another of Dad’s claims to fame was that he was “good at holidays” and we have many fond memories of family holidays in Wales and latterly cruising in Europe and spending our last Christmas together at Center Parcs.

Dad’s sense of fun was always there and we laughed a lot as a family. He treated Mary and Marie as daughters, teasing and organising them just as much as the rest of us.

He loved to see Lewis, Matthew and Zac, and enjoyed spoiling them as only a grandfather can.

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To make an understatement his spinal injury wasn’t fun.

As he lay in bed on Tryfan ward paralysed from the neck down and in agony, strong as it was his faith was tested. He was in the depths of despair and didn’t know if he had the strength to go on.

But he rose to the challenge: he had faith that his injury would lead to something. He never lost hope that he could regain some independence, and in the end he even managed to see some positives in his spinal injury:

· He felt it brought him even closer to Mary – Stephen’s wife. He and we will always be grateful to her for her support in those difficult early months and beyond.

· It also brought him into closer contact with his community, and enabled him to meet his carers, whom he loved. These dedicated, caring, loving people gave him four years of quality life with his wife and family, and Dad saw every new day of this time as a bonus.

It would be easy to concentrate on the last five years of his life, the time since his spinal injury. But we hope that we have helped celebrate his whole life and shared some of our many happy memories with you.

Last weekend Stephen visited Coventry Cathedral – its nave windows, five on each side, all face south and are revealed to view only by looking back from near the altar.

The windows represent the stages of life: birth, youth, maturity, old age and the afterlife.

To quote from the visitors’ guide

“By looking back on our lives we see how God has given us light on our way, even at times when we thought we were alone.”

Stephen found a quiet spot to pray, and when he got up, Mary noticed, carved in stone next to him, a bible quotation:

“My commandment is: love one another as I have loved you.”

We knew he loved us, and he knew we loved him.

There are no regrets: there was nothing left un-said between us.