OBITUARIES
Betty Cooper LGS STAFF 1971-1992
Grant Sutcliffe LGS STAFF 2001 - 2019 Grant joined the School from Lincoln Minster School as a Business Studies teacher and also Director of Hockey in 2001. That seems a rather bland statement and hides the true story of this remarkable man. His previous life was in Zimbabwe where, after doing National Service, he was a farm supervisor for a wealthy Arab family. When the troubles began there, the Sutcliffe’s emigrated to England with just £200 in their pockets leaving all their possessions behind. Grant found work for a local landscaping company but working with young people was his true calling and so he trained as a teacher. He was an inspiration in the classroom, but it was on the hockey field that he was to make his mark and firmly cement himself in the School’s sporting history. He re-invented the game, all the more remarkable because he didn’t have a pitch at School available to him. That was not a problem, just a challenge, to a man with his background. Hours booking and then spending time on buses to the University and St Margaret’s in Leicester were to dominate all the time he was at the School. His objective was to move Hockey from being a minor winter sport to stand shoulder to shoulder with rugby. Not only did he achieve that, but he managed to transform it into the major winter sport with tremendous success at senior level as the fruition of the hours spent with the junior teams paid off. However, in addition to not having a pitch available to him, he didn’t have any staff to help him either until Jez Clarke arrived. Again, he overcame this by creating a club at the School – Loughborough Sharks, named after his favourite rugby team the Natal Sharks – which could use the High School’s astro when they didn’t need it. In the end, in addition to ten School teams, the Sharks had three men’s teams and two mixed teams playing in the national and local leagues, enabling boys from the youngest age to play with and against adult players. The sight of a team of 14 year olds playing a team of 50 year olds is a lasting memory! Through this pathway he created fine players – none more so than the Great Britain international David Condon – who still play regularly and have leadership roles in hockey clubs all around the country and abroad. For anyone involved in School Sport that has to be your aim. Tragically he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour a few months before his planned retirement in 2019 but was able to attend the opening of the new Astroturf pitch appropriately named after him in April 2019. In the following months he showed great peace and fortitude in battling his illness until he died on 13 December 2020.
Betty Cooper retired in 1992 after 21 years as Assistant Secretary. She was one of the few non-teaching staff well known to the boys: her front-line position in the General Office made her not only the first contact with school visitors to Buckland, but also the source of lunch passes for boys who had forgotten their lunch cards. However, the acquisition of these vital passports by hungry but forgetful boys was a procedure somewhat akin to Daniel venturing into the lion’s den! Her other main task was typing the long U.C.C.A/P.C.A.S. references and over the years she must have produced thousands of these vital reports, helping to launch a generation of boys into their post LGS futures in Higher Education. On her last day, she was chauffeur driven home with her husband in a vintage Rolls-Royce, driving in state through the Walks which were lined by hundreds of boys waving farewell with fluttering lunch passes! She died on 14 February 2021.
Peter Linton CLASS OF 2001 Peter left the School with 9 GCSEs in 1999, however, it was to be the Bridge he learnt in the 10+ exam seven years earlier that was to lead in 2005 to him pursuing his career as a professional poker player. It turned out to be the right decision as he went on to win more than $1,142,871 in 28 poker live tournaments alone. In all-time money ranking he was ranked 114 in England and 1837 in the world. His biggest success was winning $487,006 in one tournament. Within the poker fraternity, he was a pretty controversial figure with a massively aggressive playing style and he generally thought all other players were idiots compared to him. A fellow player said: ‘You didn’t ever want him at your table, he used to be relentless.’ He was a unique character and a huge loss to the game when he died of a heart attack in April 2021 whilst playing in Mexico.
49