Hello.

Sadly, we now say goodbye to another of our teachers, Dai (David) Roberts, who has died at the age of 81. He joined the staff in September 1961 as head of PE and in that rôle led the school Rugby teams to impressive victories and became well-known within the wider School. In recent years he became a frequent correspondent to the Common Room, and you will find a number of his stories about the School there.

Our condolences go to his wife Joan, and his four children – daughter Glain and sons Gareth, Elwyn and Gwynfor.

We were alerted to his passing by members Irene Morley and Phil Wright. Phil sent a message to the Common Room (message 97) reproduced here:

“ I was sorry to learn that David, or Dai as he was known in my day, died recently.

He was a huge influence on my school days, as I give him all of the credit for inspiring me of a love for the game of rugby, as well as instilling in me, I hope, a sense of fair play and sportsmanship.

I was in e-mail correspondence with him earlier this year, as you can see from an earlier message of mine to this web-site, and I was pleased to be able to tell him that my current job includes coaching rugby to boys aged from 7 to 11 at a school in Surrey.

My condolences go to his family.

Phil Wright”

Irene, who contacted the committee directly, writes:

“If you have a look at his Friends Reunited entry there are other snippets of info..... such as the fact that he was educated at Royal Masonic School so he was a boarder, which probably made him the strict schoolmaster he was!  Also played rugby for Felixstowe and was in the forces.”

Andrew Gardner writes that he believes Dai studied in Denmark, which he thinks was at the time one of the few places where one could study physical education at degree level. Andrew stresses this was from memory, and may be wrong, but certainly “he used to wear a track-suit with a ‘Denmark’ badge on it”.

You can read an obituary report from the Nottingham Evening Post (opens in a new window) from which we were able to draw a brief biography.

Dai joined the School in 1961 as head of PE and in 1966 joined Nottingham Rugby Football Club as the first official coach appointed by an English club. He later became a President of the club and only the second Life Member. In 1977 he left the School and moved to Canada to become technical director of the Canadian RFU. He came back to Nottingham in 1987 to manage a branch of Gascoignes, the estate agents, in Angel Row. But he returned to Canada in 2005 to be close to his four children.

Many thanks to Jeff Mann (who, like me, didn’t know Dai as a teacher) for assembling this information for us.

And before we close, here’s an advance notice of our plans for our next major reunion:

We plan to hold it in the summer of 2013, which will be 60 years since our first School intake was recruited – guesting for a year at Henry Mellish (Boys) and West Bridgeford (Girls) while our school was being completed. The Reunion will be held at Portland College like the last one, when the reaction was very favourable. More details, and the exact date, nearer the time when we are able to seek a firm booking.

Roger Pikett, November 2011

If you’re visiting for the first time, welcome. We hope you enjoy what you find here. We hope you’ll contribute to the site, too: post a message for everyone to read (click Common Room on the left) or send us copy, images, or raw information to add to the features we have already. I’m Roger (‘Prof’) Pikett, a founder pupil at the School and a member of the CLeWS committee. You can email me at the site: webmaster@carltonlewillowsgs.org.uk. The site now has two domain names – the official one is “carltonlewillowsgs.org.uk”, while the other is “carltonlewillows.org.uk”. This was done because many surfers leave off the “gs”. Though you can reach the website using either name, our email addresses all use the official name, with “gs” at the end, only.

www.carltonlewillowsgs.org.uk