In Focus/OB Bulletin Summer 2012
Page 44
Steven Green (1967-1974) couldn’t make the Headmaster’s Welcome Back Dinner in May for the 1974 Leavers and sends his best regards to those who can still remember him from those days.
Steven 2 years ago when he was working in Lokichoggio, Kenya, on the Sudanese border. Steven and family in the mid-80s when he was a MAF Engineer in Dodoma, Tanzania.
I don’t think it is just nostalgia that the more distant my memories of Birkenhead School become, the more thankful I am for my time there. That is not because school days were ‘the best days of my life’, as people sometimes say. I came from a very ordinary working-class background, my father being a police constable. I found it hard to be isolated from my old friends, seemingly the only one in Bebington travelling up to ‘the posh school’. Of course, that was a naive expression, because it was not simply a ‘Privilege-Only-SomeHave’ because of the Direct Grant system. It was an opportunity which leaves one with a sense of responsibility towards society and the wider world. May I share with you some of my most vivid memories, which might resonate with some boys from my era? I was one of those who would rush out at Junior School break times to get the best hacker-sticks. I dreaded WTC Rankin’s science lessons, among other encounters with him. On one occasion, it was deep snow and, since the buses were not operating, I phoned the School to ask what I should do. WTCR said: ‘Walk!’ (from Bebington!?) When I eventually arrived at School, he told me off for not wearing my cap! ‘I didn’t want to get it wet, sir’. ‘But what if you get cold and die of pneumonia, boy?!’ In later life, he became a friend, and source of great encouragement to me! I remember Rev’d Ted Smailes, spectacles perched on the end of his nose, trying to teach us whilst lying prostrate on a desk because of his bad back, and then seizing us by our sideburns if we couldn’t answer a question. In Jock Austin’s lessons, you’d be more concerned to avoid a blast of his smoky breath, rather than his ‘Clear about that?’ interrogation. I seemed to be ‘Mr Average’ in most academic departments at School, but was a bit better at sports. Breaking my arm playing away for the school at St. David’s College in North Wales didn’t put me off rugby and I eventually made the 1 st XV, as open-side wing-forward. I recall feeling quite important boarding the plane at Liverpool Airport to go and play King William’s College, Isle of Man, but being brought down to earth by the spartan dormitory facilities, and eventual defeat.
We had some fantastic extra-curricular activities. Who can forget the sense of freedom on orienteering trips in North Wales? Or the exhilaration of experiencing, for the first time, the breathtaking beauty of Carnedd Llewellyn in Snowdonia? As I was already part of an Air Training Corps unit near my home, I joined the Naval section of the CCF. This would also mean I could go to the fullyfunded camps at Naval Air Stations, where we had helicopter rides, and were winched up in mock-rescues, and simulated, in a swimming pool, being ditched in the sea. Would these things get beyond risk-assessment today?! As was often the case in those days, I was the first from my family to go to university but, for various reasons, didn’t want to be too far away from home. As you may have gathered already, I was very interested in aircraft, so when Hawker Siddeley Aviation (before it became British Aerospace) offered to sponsor me through a 4year Undergraduate Apprenticeship at Chester and the University of Salford, I seized the opportunity. After 5 years, I qualified as an Aerospace Production Engineer and was put on the fast-track management programme. However, something else was ‘calling’ me. Just after my ‘O’ levels, I began thinking about deeper things and asking questions like: ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘Is the complex beauty all around us simply random?’ I began studying the Bible and I embraced the Christian faith in a personal way. It changed my life radically. Eventually I was led to an organization called Mission Aviation Fellowship, which involved 5 more years of aircraft maintenance training and Theological College. MAF is a Christian organization, operating 135 aircraft across 30 countries in the developing world. I went with my wife, Jane (a nurse), to Tanzania, where I became Chief Engineer, and also a Chartered Engineer. It was humbling to see the way aircraft could be used to bring so much material and spiritual help to so many people. Of course, I felt keenly the responsibility of signing an aircraft as ‘airworthy’, knowing that people’s lives continued on the next page