from Phoenix 1966 [published July 1966]
JOHN RAYMOND HUNTER
30th April, 1930 - 8th August, 1965
As the school re-assembled for the beginning of the Autumn Term we learned with very deep sorrow and shock the news of the death of Mr. Ray Hunter during the holiday. We knew that he had been gravely ill in hospital since Easter, but, though his recovery had been erratic, the doctors had expected him to be well enough to go home in early August. This was not to be.
Mr. Hunter joined the staff in September 1959, thus fulfilling an ambition to be a geography teacher, for which he had worked unrelentingly for several years. Having left Grammar School in Wrexham, he had to accept several jobs before he could arrange to come to London to study geography and geology the hard way-by evening classes at the Birkbeck College of London University. By determination and sheer stamina he won through and when he graduated with honours in 1959 he had earned the respect of all the staff of the Birkbeck Geography Department. I have heard high praise of him as a student from both Professor Henderson and Professor Drury.
With us he did memorable work. His keenness for field work will be rememÂbered by all of us who followed his driving pace as he led the straggling field, map in hand, over Cader Idris or Brecon Beacons, or who waited with ill-concealed impatience as he hacked a rock to extract a fossil or a mineral. His knack of finding a cup of tea in the most unlikely places was quite remarkable, and his misery if he failed to find one quite unbearable.
Though a rugger player himself, he tried to learn the rules of soccer (he would claim no higher than this himself) to help the school games. His magisterial performance of Macbeth in the school play in 1964 revealed another side to the man. Whether we knew him as colleague or teacher, we are grateful for all he did and for all he was. He lived fully, gave willingly and served honestly. To his widow and his two young daughters we give our respect, our sympathy and our thanks.
R.D.W.