Sydney Leonard Brown (Syd) was born in Portsmouth on 8th June 1924. Appropriately, given his birthplace, his father, George known to us as Jim, was a sailor from a naval family. Jim was aboard HMS Galatea when it fired the first shots at the battle of Jutland in 1916. After the war Jim was seconded to the New Zealand navy, perhaps en route visiting the city of Sydney, after which Syd was named.
Syd’s mother was Sarah (Sadie) Collins, the daughter of a boiler maker and a widower. Jim and Sadie married in Wallsend in 1919 and had two boys. The family settled in south London. After leaving the Navy George/Jim Brown worked in a post office. The elder brother was Des, who went on to work for IBM at Hursley near Winchester.
Sadly, neither Syd nor Des had any children.
For someone who was 15 at its outbreak, the 2nd World War dominated Syd’s young adult life. For instance, he was evacuated to a farm in Narberth in Pembrokeshire, which he greatly enjoyed especially the contrast with urban life.
Much to his regret, he failed his medical for the Services because of a skin condition, but he did contribute as firewatcher in the London blitz. War disrupted his student life too. He chose first to do teacher training at St Paul's college Cheltenham in geography and geology, where he obtained a distinction, and then in 1944 to study for his BSc at the London School of Economics but with the first period in temporary accommodation in Cambridge. He was awarded a BSc in Economics in 1949.
To my mind there were two loves in Syd’s life. Eileen Gilmore (my mother’s sister) whom he met at a conference in 1954 and married after six years of sustained courtship. Eileen was a headmistress of a girl’s school in Widnes and then, post marriage, a lecturer at Maria Assumpta, a teacher training college in London. Syd was besotted with her. As he later said, the joy and companionship Eileen brought him was "heavenly" and that she allowed him to have a love affair with his work as well as with her.
Tragically, Eileen developed stomach cancer and died in 1990 such that they were denied a time of retirement together.
Syd’s other love was indeed his work, specifically the educational development of young people. This he did professionally. Initially as a geography teacher at Forest Hill; then as a head of a boys secondary modern in Harrow where he set up a 6th form, widened the curriculum and forged close links with the Lascelles girls school; a senior schools inspector at the London Borough of Newham; before moving to the midlands to be Vice Principal of Loughborough College (a famous sports establishment such that Syd could claim to know the great England rugby prop, Fran Cotton – who set up ‘Cotton Traders’) and to be principal of the 6th form college at Stoke on Trent (where his most famous student was Lee Chapman footballer, restaurateur and husband of actress Leslie Ash ). Finally, for his last job, he came to Maisemore to work on the government’s technical vocational education initiative with Gloucestershire County Council.
But Syd wasn’t just interested in formal education, its policies and practices. He was also even more eager to know what the next generation and the one afterwards was up to; what were they doing, where their careers were going. He was always giving praise and encouragement. Keen not just to know about his relatives but also about the work ideas of his carers at the Painswick home where he lived out his last years.
Moreover, he was not slow in giving advice. For example, he suggested at the beginning of my working life that I should be a graduate police entrant and, at its conclusion, that we should travel a lot to have a good retirement. He himself took a cruise every year, always with an educational aspect, and told us his only regret was not going twice a year.
But with others he was less instructive. Sean (another of Eileen’s nephews) tells me that his teenage son, Joe, not the most loquacious of individuals at the time, was gently encouraged by Syd to give his opinion on different topics, especially while washing the dishes!
Not that there weren’t other passions in Syd’s life besides Eileen and personal development. He was a guide, then welcomer at Gloucester cathedral, did the accounts for Probus and dabbled in painting. He took a keen interest in sport, latterly watching cricket with a fellow resident in his care home, and was even more driven by an interest in political affairs. I remember him ringing my father on the night of the 1964 election to complain about the behaviour of the Tory candidate for Smethwick who had used fears of immigration to get elected. He had a file of correspondence with government ministers, and had a lively correspondence with Lib Dem leader, Paddy Ashdown. Latterly, he was glued to the Parliament TV channel especially the unfolding Brexit drama which generated heated discussions with anyone who did not agree that Mrs May was doing a difficult job well.
Yet perhaps the things that I most admired in Syd were:
- his unfailing courtesy,
- his curiosity in what was going on around him both in his immediate environment and the wider world (including from his wheelchair in the Painswick care home),
- his relentless intellectual energy (especially to seek improvements big and small even in his life in the care home)
- and his courage, most recently in facing up to his debilitating illness (spinal cord compression) without complaint.
Syd died in Cheltenham General hospital in the early hours of Easter Saturday (20th April) after developing pneumonia. His funeral was at Gloucester Crematorium on Tuesday 21st May 2019.