Black, David

OT 292 - West

Date of Death: 27/05/2015

In The Gazette number 62, editor Stephen Turner relates the following:

In the last edition I included a piece based on a meeting with Old boy David Black, whom I had tracked down from a 1998 article in The Sunday Telegraph which mentioned him. Sadly, he passed away on 27 May and I attended his funeral in Ealing, West London, on 19 June. It was a genuinely uplifting occasion, with the emphasis on the celebration of a remarkable life rather than the expression of grief.

A number of Old Boys have shared their recollections of David with me, including Chris Carter (OT 295), who did so in an email, part of which follows:
I particularly enjoyed your article on David Black as he was a contemporary of mine in West House and, apart from one brief speculative mention in The Gazette many years ago, I've never heard anything of him since he left Ottershaw in 1958. We started on the same day in September 1953 and were in the same dormitory for our first term. I don't remember the incident of the initiation in a cold shower which he mentions, but perhaps for some reason I was lucky enough to
escape that! I certainly wouldn't have forgotten it if it had happened to me.

He also mentions falling in love with one of the student cooks (in West House), but says that her name was Christine. The one I remember him falling in love with was called Cynthia (Smith). I was quite envious as she was very good looking! Has his memory failed him, or was there another girl I didn't know about?! He was certainly head-over-heels about Cynthia during his last year (1957-58) and was very upset when she broke it off. (I thought it was one of the younger masters who was to blame, not the Head Boy.) I had actually got to know Cynthia and her colleagues quite well because for the previous year (1956-57) my squad duty was as kitchen assistant, dividing up the portions of butter, sugar and marmalade for each table in the dining room. In my last year (1958-59) Cynthia invited her younger sister Angela to come and stay for a weekend in West House and somehow contrived for her to
meet me. I was instantly smitten, but it couldn't last as I was in Surrey and she lived in Bath and, worse still, she already had a boyfriend who was at Marlborough College!

David mentions his prowess at long distance running. He's very modest about that. He was in fact a superb runner, and in my opinion could have been of international standard if he'd taken it seriously and not smoked so much!! But at that time there was no one at Ottershaw who actually did any serious athletics coaching. Chris ended by expressing his keen interest in having David admit that his great love was Cynthia rather than Christine! I suppose we may never know her name for sure. However, if the article has elicited any other memories of David or of the School at that time, do let us know!