Framlinghamian 2022 - Flipbook - Page 164
OBITUARIES
He was a respected commentator at many
trials including the English national staged
in front of Holkham Hall in August 1997,
where he also competed. And he was also
selected to judge one of the trials on the
then highly popular BBC programme 20
years after taking up his whistle and crook.
Alison, Sarah, James and Robert, 11
grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Shirley and her late husband Mike were
among that elite band of couples who
ploughed their teaching furrows, in tandem,
in the employ of Framlingham College with
Mike teaching Chemistry (‘Woe betide the
boy who looked at the fine view, across the
mere, to the castle during his lesson’! - A
quote from On an eminence), and Shirley,
‘just down the road’, at BH.
He also oversaw the closure of Duffield’s
flour milling operation in the early 1990s
and latterly the major expansion into
specialist animal feeds with the purchase
of Baxter’s of Horsford and finally Cubitt
& Walker, of Ebridge mills, near North
Walsham.
He had become fascinated by watching
sheepdogs and their handlers on a family
holiday in the Lake District in 1963, he
finally bought his own dog almost two
decades later. Although sheep were never
kept on the family farm, the farm dogs
were used to manage cattle in a rough and
ready way. His rise from raw novice was
rapid as he was invited to judge the Blue
Riband event, the annual United States
national trials in 1990. Over the following
years, he travelled widely holding training
seminars in Europe and visiting Sweden,
Denmark, Germany, Belgium and Italy to
meet fellow enthusiasts. He also organised
many sheepdog trials over the years
raising thousands of pounds for children’s
charities including the long-running event at
Overstrand.
A well-known supporter at Carrow Road, he
was a fixture at every home match and had
missed just one home game since 1946.
He leaves a widow, Sonia. He was married
to Mary for 49 years, who survives, and
they had six children, Susan, Marion,
Alan Byers Molson
AL AN BYERS MOLSON (K48-53)
Alan Byers Molson (K48-53) passed away
at his home in Houston, Texas at the age of
93 on 31st March 2019.
He had for many years been a regular
correspondent with Chris Essex, whom
he regaled with stories of his time at
Framlingham.
JOHN RIXON (S65-70)
John Rixon (S65-70) died at the age of 64
on 14th January 2019. His daughter, in her
eulogy commented: “As a teenager Dad
went to Framlingham College as a boarder,
and absolutely hated it. In one of his school
reports it was written:
“John Rixon is the worst behaved boy in
the entire school”. I remember one day in
our school holidays, when he took us for
a day out at Framlingham castle, on the
way home he insisted on driving past his
old school and ‘mooning’ at it from the car
park.”
John was certainly not the only one to
have hated those years, but we publish the
above, confident that things improved, not
least because it was through Framlingham
College that John met Sarah Amos, the
sister of Jonathan Amos (S67-71), to whom
he was very happily married for over forty
wonderful years.
SHIRLEY ROBINSON (HONORARY OF)
Rob McLean, Norfolk Sheepdog handler,
with his collie, Tom. ARCHANT LIBRARY
162
THE FRAMLINGHAMIAN 2019
December 2018, having, for the greater
part of the year, bravely battled a diagnosis
of terminal cancer.
Former alumni of Framlingham College
Preparatory School will be saddened to
learn that Shirley Robinson died on 13
Shirley’s first appearance at the Brandeston
‘Chalk Face’ was, she assured me, a
strictly temporary measure... but then
so was ‘Income Tax’! She couldn’t quite
outrun Income Tax but still managed an
extraordinarily long innings of 30 years at
the Hall.
Those teaching in Preparatory Schools
have, by nature, to be pretty adaptable to
the demands of the Timetable. Thus Shirley
was another such ‘leopardess’ who had to
change her spots – initially a member of the
Maths Department – and even undertook
Junior Rugby coaching, in the early days,
only to finally morph into a highly effective
Head of Science. I quickly lost count of the
number of our School Christmas Lunches
where Shirley’s place card (traditionally
always drawn by pupils) featured a fully
operational Bunsen Burner. Certainly no
child could possibly have left Brandeston in
the slightest doubt as to the essential nature
of this particular piece of Lab equipment!
A School Common Room always needs
‘characters’ and folk willing to express
forthright and pertinent opinions. Shirley
always scored on both counts.... but, as she
would be the first to point out, her primary
concern extended beyond the Common
Room – to the pupils.
Generations of youngsters still carry with
them fond memories of the post Common
Entrance challenge of ‘The Great Egg
Race’, or seeing her, apparently at prayer,
day after day in the Summer Term, on her
knees in the Long Corridor but actually
meticulously updating the Athletics Star
Award charts. She was a genius with ‘stats
& figures’. And, of course, there would
have been no Annual Inter-House Sports
Day or Inter-House Swimming Sports
without Shirley fulfilling her role at the
Results Desk. When in the late 1980s I
arranged to bring the prestigious East
Anglian Prep Schools Cross Country