Dear Mr. Andrews:
It is with the deepest sadness and a great sense of personal loss that I learnt of the passing away of JC Royds. The news came to us here in the USA through an e-mail that Girma Zewdie had written to his contacts towards the end of last week. Girma does not have my e-mail, but the news was passed on to me by a mutual friend who was one of the recipients.
This sad news has been cause for a week of fond memories, and of the saddest and most pleasant reflections for me throughout. For Ethiopians who had the honour and privilege of sitting at JCR feet at the General Wingate school in Addis Ababa between 1961 and 1965, he represented the best of British traditions: strict, reserved, friendly without in any way being loose and, deep down - as in the best traditions of headmastership - having their best interests at heart.
I had the honour of being the earliest recipient of these favours. I followed him to Uppingham when he was appointed Headmaster of the school and left his Wingate tenure way back in 1965 Two more students followed me in each of the following two years. The first lot were Abraha Derso and Kidan Negatu and the second, Aklilu Demissie and Indale Dinku. Of these, Abraha and I attended Uppinghan whereas the rest went to various schools in different parts of the country. Abraha and Aklilu are now medical doctors in England, with Aklilu having gained the status of FRCS - as I learnt through a letter that JCR had written to me over the past year.
Indale was an agricultural engineer who worked for a British company that had launched a farming business in the Awash valley in Ethiopia, but which was cut short by the revolution of 1974. Since then, we only know that Indale went back to somewhere in Europe. It was a matter of regretful exchange between JCR and me that we never found out where he was.
Kidan, on the other hand, went back to Ethiopia with me in 1971, and we both started teaching at what then used to be called Haile Selassie I University. Kidan's is a rather a sad case. For he tragically committed suicide just in his second year of teaching at the university. This caused a great deal of sadness to all who knew him both in Ethiopia and in England.
Drs. Abraha and Aklilu, who remained in England, kept close contact with JCR all through the coming years. Not only them, but anyone who had attended the Wingate school either sought or got in touch with him as soon as they set foot in Europe or the USA.
After a few years of correspondence, my contact with JCR petered out - specially after things started moving from bad to worse under the Mengistu regime. The first time that I got to see him was when he chose to come over to Ethiopia after the downfall of Mengistu in 1991. For old-Wingateers in Ethiopia at the time, this was a climactic occurrence. Of course, JCR had principally chosen to come to Ethiopia to visit Asfaw's school which he had continuously supported all through the difficult years under Mengistu.
Asfaw Yemiru, as I am sure you must know, was a senior student at the time JCR introduced the scholarship programme at the Wingate. He left at the end of JCR's first year and set up a small school in the church compound adjoining the Wingate. Over the past forty years, this small beginning has blossomed into a great educational enterprise - winning its initiator wide international prestige and recognition. All through, Asfaw had the unflagging encouragement and support of JCR who not only raised and sent him financial support but who also followed and encouraged every minute detail that Asfaw carried out in pursuit of his enterprise.
What JCR attempted at the end of his service as a priest in Peterborough is a true testimonial to his commitment to work on behalf of mankind, regardless of nationality or religious attachment. Although he had been ordained a priest, he chose to go and work, as always with an educational undertaking, to Peshawar in Pakistan. This was soon cut short by an illness that would trouble him, on and off, to the very end of his days. In any case, his commitment would never have been understood by Al-Qaeda and associated forces that have been set loose in that part of the world, and have negatively affected the chances for peaceful existence all around the globe.
I may not have corresponded with JCR over a long period of time while the country underwent the travails of a misguided revolution under Mengistu. Those were demanding times when one did not know where anything was headed. After that visit of his in 1993, however, we kept in regular contact over the past almost twenty years and have touched upon things past, present and future.
Also, we corresponded quite intensively over the last six to seven years - when I have mostly been caught up with current preoccupations and worries. This is about something totally new for our times, which it took me almost two years of close and intensive pursuit before drawing the conclusions that I drew. It has to do with the Ethiopia that he came to know and love so much.
At first, he was quite skeptical. But when I sent him a somewhat-closely-argued paper exposing my worries, he saw what I see. Despite the difficulty of reading closely-argued and seemingly complicated ideas in old age, JCR took time but did not miss a point.
Incidentally, this was a paper I had written to someone who was an old student of JCR at Bryanston, and who came to study and publish a seminal book on "Haile Selassie's Government". As I am sure you must know by now, this was Professor Christopher Clapham - who had taught me in my first year at Cambridge, and with whom I have always been in touch.
Anyway, I am so grateful for JCR's support. Ever the critical master, he went through what was occupying me with a fine-toothed comb before granting his mark of approval, for which I am so thankful.
Finally, let me admit that this has been a highly uprooting week for me. JCR lived to be ninety, and that is a priviledge which is not granted to everybody. And we do know we all must die. But I have been highly 'boulverse' by JCR's departure. Perhaps, this has to do with my having seen him for only two weeks in the last forty years.
There is also a large ex-Wingate community here in the Washington area and we are all full of JCR in correspondence and as we meet. A classmate from Canada has even called me on his receiving the news from England. But I had to go further.
There is an old Uppinghamian here in Washington with whom we went together to Trinity, Cambridge in 1967. This is somone by the name of Peter Hancock who happens to be a close friend of his old Uppingham master, Robby Raven-Roberts. I broke the news to Peter, and Peter broke the news to Robby way out on the west coast. Robby also happens to be great friend of JCR's, from their time as headmasters of schools in Haile Selassie's Ethiopia.
The network expands, but I still feel 'lonely' in my loss.
My love to all in the family.
RIP to JCR
Fisseha Zewdie
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