Mr. A. G. Stevens
Mr. Stevens, who had joined the School in 1947, taught Modern Subjects and was the President of the School Chess Club. He died suddenly in 1952. The obituary below records a speech in the typical prose of Dr. A. R. Simpson, the Headmaster.
Mr. Stevens, the Senior Master for Modern Subjects, died suddenly on the 24th September. At his funeral, which took place in wales, Mr. Mervyn Morgans represented the School. The Morning Service on the 30th September was held in his memory, and the Head Master then said:
"Great was the shock of a few days ago and stunned and harrowed was the mind by th dreadful happening. The interval has been too greedily short for even bare recovery, too short for the unravelment of our perplexity, too short for shifting sorrow and bafflement to find sure words. One would feel rather than state. One would suggest that the keynote of our thoughts and words be thankfulness. We are thankful for these five years of Mr. Steven's conscientious work, high scholarship, and warm comradeship. We are grateful for the light and laughter of his presence in Classroom and Common Room alike; for he was extremely popular and well-liked; deservedly so, for Mr. Stevens was as he was, no more and no less, natively inspired by that cordially humanism which, if it is typical of any of the four Nations which fundamentally comprise our British Brotherhood of Nations is, I feel, typically Welsh. When he cam to us he found a Department already sound and good. He improved it. He enlarged it. He promoted it. He elevated it to dependable Scholarship rank. As a scholar himself, duly attested as being of University first rank in Economics, and, significantly, a double Honours Graduate in Economics and English, he was what the true economist must be, whether in School or State, for the proper fulfillment of his function, at once the moral philosopher and the exact scientist, at once the objective logician and the subjective humanist, at once the statistician and the idealist, a politically well-balanced man of heart and head. We are grateful that death for him was merciful and swift.
Mr. Stevens belonged to a family closely knit in family affection, and to them our sympathies go out today in their bereavement. An undetected sclerosis brought about his sudden end, an enviable death, if death must come, when, in better and more ancient words "The Huntress slays by visitation of her gentle shafts".
Ordinary, unassuming, unpretentious, yet no ordinary man was he. The pathway to his distinguished university career was especially hard and uphill for him, preceded as it was by the voluntary abandonment of his studies for many years in favout of the immediate urgency of family support, his father being blind and two younger brothers to be supported.
Immeasurably weaker is our School by his departure, yet surely it must be the stronger by the force of his example."
from The Gaytonian, December 1952
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