Framlinghamian 2022 - Flipbook - Page 174
OBITUARIES
Commander John Russell Simpson
COMMANDER JOHN RUSSELL SIMPSON, ROYAL NAVY (K32-36)
Commander John Simpson died peacefully in his sleep at
Allonsfield House Care Home, Campsea Ashe, on 4th April
2020, just four days after his 101st birthday. He moved
there in September 2019, when he left his home at 22 Mills
Almshouses, Framlingham.
John sitting with Norman Porter, holding his SOF 100th birthday card
Just over a year before, on Sunday 31st March 2019, John
celebrated his 100th birthday with many friends and family
members from across four generations. His daughter, Helen
Chapman, invited Norman Porter and Peter Howard-Dobson
to join the festivities as representatives of the Society of Old
Framlinghamians, which John had served so well and for so
long. They presented John with a 100th birthday card from
the President and members of the SOF. OF members of the
family present included his son Jeremy Simpson (K56-64),
his granddaughters Hetta O’Connor (P94-99) and Sophia
Rogers (M94-02), his grandsons Robin Smallwood (S82-86)
and Adrian Smallwood (S84-88), and his cousin Charles
Simpson (K65-72). The other picture, here, was taken ten years
previously at John’s 90th birthday party.
Born 31st March 1919, Died 4th April 2020
The other card John was given was from the College’s
Headmaster at the time, Paul Taylor, in which he congratulated
John on his centenarian status and recalled the special role
that the Simpson family had played over the years since
Framlingham College’s foundation in 1864. John also received
two more special birthday cards: one from Her Majesty the
Queen, and one from the Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP, then
Pensions Secretary. In hindsight, it is wonderful that it was
possible to celebrate John’s life and achievements, as well as
his contributions to Framlingham and the SOF, at a time before
COVID-19 severely curtailed all such commemorations.
The Simpson family is perhaps the only one to have twenty-nine
members educated at Framlingham College since it opened in
1865. John’s grandfather, George Henry Simpson, was the first
one in the family to walk through the College doors, and the
line has remained unbroken to date. John was on the Board of
Governors and was President of the SOF in 1975/76.
John was born in Golborne,
Lancashire on 31st March 1919.
He had younger twin brothers:
Michael Ratcliffe Simpson (K32-40)
who was killed in a car crash in
1950, aged 27, and Peter Ratcliffe
Simpson (K32-40) who died in
Queensland in 2017, aged 95.
At Framlingham, John was a
Foundation Scholar and a subJohn, at the age of 15
prefect to Head Boy, Norman
Borrett. He won the Goldsmith
Prize for French, was President of the Debating Society and a
member of 1st XV rugby team. In his final year in the 1st XV
the comment was, ‘On the light side for a forward but is
active and uses his feet well. Needs more vigour and
determination, especially in defence’.
The picture is of John, aged 15.
John joined the Royal Navy in 1936 as a Cadet under training
in the cruiser HMS FROBISHER. He passed out third on the list
of Paymaster Cadets and joined HMS SUSSEX as Paymaster
Midshipman in the Mediterranean Fleet. During this time,
in 1937 he saw action in charge of an armed Naval Patrol,
manning a roadblock outside Haifa in Israel during the period
of Palestinian/Jewish unrest that followed Partition in that year.
He also acquired a tattoo of a tiger’s head on his forearm
(whether in sobriety or not, we shall never know) inked by an
Egyptian tattooist in Alexandria, who clearly had never seen
a tiger. John always remarked wryly that it looked more like a
mouse than a tiger! From that day onwards, he was nicknamed
‘Tiger’ by shipmates and friends alike.
John at his 90th birthday party in 2009
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THE FRAMLINGHAMIAN 2019/2020