Past Presidents, Wynn Anderson (2008-10), Michael West (2012-14) and Miles Henry (1988-89) at a
pre-dinner planning meeting in February 2013.
OPU (London branch) Presidents – part 3 (1981-90)
1981/82 I H D Scales
The elder son of Henry Scales, Munster housemaster and later Second Master of the school, Ian entered Gloucester House in 1936 and left Portora in 1945, thus qualifying exactly as a product of I M B Stuart's reign as headmaster.
Known to the Scout Troop as the only tenderfoot who could never light a fire with the one match George Andrews allowed ("wartime shortages" we were told) and therefore never achieving Second Class, Ian joined the ATC, rising to sergeant and attending several courses at RAF Halton.
Something of a disappointment to his Housemaster Mickey Murfet and his father (who had been a classically educated reader in Latin and Greek), Ian dropped Latin in the Fourth Form, taking History as an alternative.
Without Latin, it was not possible to take the Trinity exams to study engineering, so he was apprenticed to ITT-Creed for four years and stayed with them on their development staff before joining the Colonial Service in 1951. He spent ten years in Nigeria educating the Africans in the tricks of telecommunications before independence in 1960 stopped many expatriate Colonial Civil Servants in their careers.
Following a few years back with ITT, he was invited to join United Press International as their Technical Director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, where he introduced up to date computer technology ahead of all other News Agencies in Fleet Street, as well as designing and installing a new European Centre for UPI in Brussels.
Again by invitation, in 1973 he was appointed General Manager of a new company – Transtel – by the American owners and was responsible for the introduction of modern electronic teleprinters to the press, broadcasting and the developing computer business. He saw Transtel grow from a three-men-and-a-girl sales office to a 400 employees factory in Slough, finally being made redundant at the age of 59 by the new owners. He then satisfactorily set up and ran his own technical and managerial consultancy with four employees until retirement at 65.
Since retiring he has taken to writing, mainly local history, which has proved satisfying and successful, and much better than working. He has also discovered an ability (or an inability to say "no") for doing secretarial work for local Societies and clubs. In this he is currently involved with debating, local history, Probus, the Conservatives and Freemasonry.
Portora, not only having supplied Ian's father with his career and Ian with his education, also provided a wife, when he married Valerie Taylor, a matron there. Since returning to the UK from Nigeria in 1961 they have lived in Coulsdon, overlooking the rolling Surrey countryside.
1982/93 A W Barnes; MA (Oxon)
Barney came to Portora to teach in 1932 and remained on the staff until 1966. He was the first headmaster of Gloucester House, ably assisted by his wife Clarice when it was formed in 1936, going on to be Ulster housemaster during the war and after it, while George Andrews was in the Royal Navy.
Barney was the founder and commanding officer of 804, our Air Training Corps Squadron. He was a redoubtable mathematics teacher with the ability to enthuse even the most idle boy in the subject; I write as that boy. He was in charge of tennis, and – with ‘Seasy Gilmore – cricket too, encouraging American soldiers to take up the game with mixed results. This experiment in a special relationship ended when they drove nearly all the balls – impossible to obtain during the war – into the Narrows from the upper cricket pitch.
As school developed, he became Head of the Mathematics Department and when Mickey Murfet retired Barney took on the job of housemaster of Connacht, ending his Portora career as Second Master of the school.
From Portora, Barney moved to Millfield School in Somerset and then retired to New Milton on the edge of the New Forest, where he and Clarice had an active life enjoying tennis, bridge, dancing and travelling. At 90, Barney was diagnosed as having Parkinson's Disease and they spent their last four years quietly in a retirement home, both mentally alert to the end. Barney died within a month of Clarice, proud that their daughter Rosemary's two girls also graduated from Oxford, following their grandfather's footsteps.
1983/84 J M Bliss
Michael was born in Hornchurch, Essex and lived there until his father's work moved the family around Southern England during World War II. His father was then appointed General Manager of Taylor Woods' factory in Enniskillen, just in time for Michael to be educated at Portora.
Following school Michael returned to Surrey and started working for British Rail, serving in personnel, safety, health and welfare matters. During the 32 years service with the Company he became a Member of both the Institute of Transport and of the Institute of Logistics & Transport.
In retirement he has taken to using the superb singing voice he was blessed with and has performed with several famous orchestral choirs. He also actively supports his local Conservative party.
Michael followed Billy Gunning as Secretary of the London OPU Branch and survived the years 1960-66 in that capacity to great and active effect.
1984/85 Revd D L Graham, MA
Douglas Graham was born in 1909 and entered Portora shortly after the end of World War I. He distinguished himself at Trinity as both a rugby player (an Irish trialist) and a boxer, the latter leaving him with a cauliflower ear for the rest of his life. He was also a classicist of some renown and, having worked at Eton as an assistant master for two years, followed his father into Holy Orders in 1937. His sermons at Eton became legendary: there was one he would start by holding up his wristwatch and declaring "This is a banana", a statement he claimed was as true as describing many of his congregation as Christians.
With the start of World War II he volunteered to join the Royal Naval Chaplaincy, a move objected to by Eton who did not wish to see him go. When he went anyway, he was told by the College that he could never return to their staff. He served four years as a Chaplain RNVR and was on board the cruiser Trinidad in Arctic waters when she was holed by a faulty torpedo and again two months later when she was sunk by two JU88 bombers.
Barred from Eton after his war service, in 1945 Graham turned to his old school where the headmastership had just become vacant. He served Portora under difficult circumstances, rebuilding the school's reputation during a period of post-war shortages, both of materials and staff, with great success in both spheres.
In 1954 he became head of Dean Close School in Cheltenham, so becoming the first ever Head in the history of Portora to leave it in favour of another.
At Dean Close, where he ruled for 14 years, his first job was again, as at Portora and for the same reasons, to get the College back on its feet. He started with a major building modernisation programme, enabling school numbers to increase steadily. Although he had been heavyweight boxing champion at Trinity and light-heavyweight champion of the Royal Navy, he realised the damage it could do to young brains and banned the sport from school, encouraging many at the Headmasters' Conference to follow his example. He also managed – against many Board members' advice – to introduce girl students.
In 1968 he resigned and went as an assistant master to Williston Academy, Easthampton, Massachusetts, retiring in 1972 and returning to Ireland where he renewed his enthusiasm for ornithology and seriously ferocious bridge. He was a lifelong friend of Samuel Beckett.
Douglas never passed a driving test, having learned the art on the empty roads of Ireland in 1929 and it showed in his ways of car control. His enjoyment of life was based on informality and kicking against the pricks of the Establishment as, for example, when he was a regular attender at Cheltenham Racecourse during his years at Dean Close, and his liberal attitude (for his time) towards pre-marital sex. "Where is the sin?" he asked.
He died in 1990 aged 81 of a massive heart attack, arguing his beliefs with letters to ‘The Times’ to the very end.
1985/86 R N Davidson, MIEE, C Eng.
Born in Lisnaskea in 1938, Robin went to Portora in 1949 as a boarder, despite his brother already managing the 12 mile daily journey as a dayboy. The school introduced him to sport, which he loved and though he never made any first team, he captained the 2nd XV and the 2nd VIII in his final year, 1956. He was also deputy head of Ulster and a sergeant in the CCF.
Robin went to Queen's University in Belfast, where he took a degree in Electrical Engineering as well as continuing with his rowing. He was in the 1st VIII for two years, stroking the University crew which represented Northern Ireland in the 1958 Commonwealth Games.
Following QUB he undertook graduate training with a heavy electrical equipment manufacturer in Norwich before moving on to a firm of Consulting Engineers in Manchester. Twenty-two years followed in the oil industry with BP International at Harlow, at the end of which he was manager of their Procurement Division. As Divisional Head he took great interest in the development of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply, becoming a Fellow and speaking regularly at seminars relevant to the oil industry.
Robin then became a Civil Servant for seven years with the Overseas Development Administration (now DFID) as Head of Procurement and eventually Director of Procurement at the EBRD in London, an organisation similar to and closely related to the World Bank.
During his working career he has visited over 40 foreign countries, an experience of many different cultures that he looks back on with great pleasure. He is 'officially' retired now but keeps himself busy as a local councillor and school governor, in between playing golf, of course.
1986/87 A W Gethin, MA
Alex Gethin was born in Kisii, Kenya, where his father was serving and was sent to Gloucester house in 1944, transferring to Leinster House, Portora in 1947. He was Head of the School 1952-53, having played in the lst XV, the athletics and the shooting teams, as well as being a member of the CCF.
He joined the army in 1953, with basic training at Caterham and Pirbright before going to Eaton Hall OTU and being commissioned in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. After a spell in Northern Ireland he joined the 1st Battalion in Kenya and returned on the last troopship (Empire Hallidale) to England in 1955 and was then demobilised. Alex then went up to Jesus College, Cambridge where he read Natural Sciences, resulting in a BA in Geology.
In 1958 he joined the Iraq Petroleum Group and worked as a field and well site geologist in Oman, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, becoming involved in the development of the offshore oilfields there. He was appointed Production Manager for the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company, responsible for over lm barrels of oil per day.
Transferred in 1974 to BP in the Guff, he completed eighteen years in the Middle East and returned to London in 1977 where he represented the Company on Petroleum Engineering matter in the Middle East. In 1980 BP sent him to Aberdeen, where he managed the Forties Field, the largest field in all the British sector of the North Sea. He was then placed in charge of all BP British Production Operations for six months before being posted to a joint venture Company in Indonesia for the Sumatra offshore field in the Malacca Straits.
Alex returned to BP London in 1984 and worked on North Sea developments before retiring in 1987 to take up his hobby of fly fishing, along with gardening, wine making and working for the local Conservatives.
1987/88 G M Coburn
Muir Coburn entered Gloucester House in 1943, moving to Portora in 1945 where, he says, he was 'poached' by Mickey Murfet for Connacht who had spotted Muir's athletic promise in GH. Under the tutelage of E Lloyd Simon, Muir learned to play the organ at Portora, the start of a life-long love affair with the instrument.
It could also be that Mickey remembered Muir's father, who started at PRS the year before. Mickey arrived there in 1916. Other family connections with the school include a cousin, Jimmy Coburn during the early ‘forties who coxed the IV (there was no VIII until after the war) and Muir's brother Brian, there from 1946-49.
After five years at school, Muir left to join a weaving factory in Lancashire owned by the then minor tycoon Cyril Lord. As an 'Apprentice Manager' he studied weaving techniques during his year there at Preston Tech., now the University of Mid-Lancs.
He then returned to Belfast to join a linen spinning and weaving company and to the. Belfast College of Technology to complete his City & Guilds in Linen Weaving. Thomas Ferguson & Co Ltd of his home town, Banbridge, headhunted him, where he became a Director and where he stayed until 1963, then moving to the London office until it was disbanded in 1992, Fergusons having been taken over some four years earlier. While in London Muir was made Chairman of The Irish Linen Guild from 1977 to 1983.
As an aid to retirement he continues in the business, as a UK & Ireland representative for several overseas textile manufacturers. His outside interests include being the fulltime (i.e. always available as) Church Organist at Thames Ditton and Freemasonry where his abilities at the console are equally well used.
1988/90 Major W Miles Henry, FRICS
(William) Miles Henry was born in Hong Kong, the elder son of Dr George Hewitt Henry (OP 1918-22), late of the Colonial Service and member of a long-standing medical family from Co Monaghan. His grandfather, father, several uncles and numerous cousins and a brother – in all twelve family members – attended Portora between c1860 and 1954. Miles entered Gloucester House in 1946 and transferred to the Upper School with an entrance scholarship in 1948, where he eventually became a house prefect in Connacht and Pipe Major of the Portora CCF band. A newspaper photograph of the band from 1951 shows him as a tall, slim piper marching to the opening of the Fermanagh Assizes.
In 1952 he was awarded an English Speaking Union scholarship by the British & American Society to study for a year at Trinity School Pawling, New York Returning to Ireland in 1953, he enrolled at TCD to study medicine. However, in 1956 he left medical school and joined the Army, taking a special entry regular commission with the Royal Engineers and was posted to North Africa. In 1958 he was granted a permanent regular commission and for the next twenty years travelled extensively as a military topographer and cartographer with the Royal Engineers' Survey Service.
He qualified as a Chartered Land Surveyor in 1964 and was subsequently elected a fellow (FRICS) in 1989. From 1972-77 he served in Washington, DC on a joint US/UK defence programme for which he received a citation for the Legion of Merit.
Miles resigned his commission in 1977 and joined the Fairey Aviation Group as an international project manager with Fairey Aviation Surveys; several years later he was appointed their Group Commercial Director.
In 1989 he was head hunted by the Norwegian defence manufacturer Kongsberg to become their Director Middle East and Asia operations for digital mapping systems and spent several years working on various national mapping agencies in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and Emirates.
In 1996 he joined the Intergraph Corporation of Huntsville, Alabama, as their full time Business Development Manager (EU) at their European HQ, Hoofddorp in the Netherlands. He retired from full time employment in 2001 but still works part time as an Intergraph retained consultant for EU business development based in Amsterdam and Brussels.
Miles married Jennifer Ann Stallabrass in Cyprus in 1961. They have two grown-up children: a daughter who, as a well-known BBC Radio/TV scriptwriter has just published her first novel, and a son who is a prominent authority and writer in the international wine trade.
