White, Ralph

French teacher and Tulk Housemaster

Date of Death: 01/02/2006

Extracts from The Gazette No 43.

Farewell to Ralph White, MA.

Ralph White died on the 1st February, in the 88th year of his age His cremation was held in Poole on the 10th February.

His sons, Martin and Tom, staged a lively and unusual farewell to their father, entirely appropriate to his fulfilled life and engaging personality. The congregation of about 150 assembled to the music of two French ditties – sung in French, of course. Martin and Tom began proceedings by presenting a kaleidoscope of Ralph’s life. While Martin rehearsed his individual abilities, for example, linguist, philanderer, tank commander, stage director, Tom produced examples in amusing detail to illustrate the topic. Of the 40 topics covered by this lively review, the most intriguing were, “mender of anything useful” and “mender of anything useless”. Act II was a short story about a beautiful woman being wooed by a suitor as she swam in a pool. Martin read short extracts in French. These were translated into Franglais by Tom. Finally the dialogue was displayed as subtitles by their wives. The last two lines read (man) “where did you learn to swim so beautifully?”; (woman) “ I was born in Venice.” Undeniably Ralph. Act III was presented by members of Ralph’s choir. A guitarist, accompanied by three lady singers, provided a cheerful account of incidents from Ralph’s life. Finally, Martin’s wife gave a moving oration of “Prospero’s Farewell to Magic”. And at the conclusion one could almost detect approving applause from the flower-bedecked coffin. It was all so wonderfully “Ralph”.

Our Society was handsomely represented by Allan and Mary Dodds, Jonathon and Angela Hughes, John Calnan, Dennis Williams, Wally Pope, Michael Carter, Julian Shardlow, Paul Nielsen, Richard Bolton, Graham Deane and Tim Christopher.
At Martin’s request, the Society will make a donation to The National Trust.
Dennis Williams (OTT 115)

 

An Appreciation of Ralph White fro Tom Weston
It was with great sadness - a feeling which will be shared by many Old Boys - and with some surprise, that I heard of the death of Ralph White. When Nina and I saw him at the Nazareth home in the summer, he was seemingly in good health, though of course badly disabled as far as movement was concerned, and in quite good spirits, and the same applied to two subsequent telephone calls. I understand, however, that there had been severe deterioration early in the New Year.

When Denys Hall and I arrived at Ottershaw in September 1951, Ralph was one of the established masters, a magnificent set of men who had served throughout the war and who, under Arthur Foot’s inspiring leadership, devoted themselves to the School in a way which guaranteed its success throughout the years. Sadly there are now few of the original Ottershaw staff still left.

R.G.W. took his degree in Modern Languages at Oxford - at Magdalen College I believe - and was a man of considerable erudition. Whatever subject might crop up - English, French, German, Spanish or classical literature, drama, opera, history, art, architecture, birdlife, gardening - he showed himself remarkably well informed, without in any way trying to show off his knowledge. He was essentially a generous and kindly man, always willing to help not only boys and masters, but anyone on the staff. Early members of the School may remember one Rosa, a gargantuan Italian lady who ruled the Botley boys in the kitchen with a “leg of mutton arm”of which Mohammed Ali himself would have been proud. One Saturday evening after she had stayed working too late to catch the bus at the Otter I asked Ralph, since in those days I only possessed a bicycle, to give her a lift home in his ancient car. The next morning he discovered that the front passenger’s seat was a complete wreck: twenty stone plus of the mighty Rosa had proved too much. I was sworn to secrecy, my offer of financial help indignantly refused, and Rosa never knew what had his kindness had cost her benefactor.

He will always be remembered for the immense amount of trouble he took with the production of the School plays, the tremendous enthusiasm which he engendered among his actors, and for the resounding success of his productions. Week after week, too, year in, year out, he produced the School Weekly News. Saturday night entertainments were quite often produced by the boys and other members of Staff, but it was always Ralph who made sure there was something interesting, amusing,, topical and entertaining going on, and regularly put something on himself.

An excellent runner in his younger days, for years he led the weekly cross country runs, and parents and masters - if not always the boys - appreciated how this turned some unfit, overweight and unhealthy new boys into some pretty fit young men. Though not an expert games player, he was always keen to turn out for the Staff Soccer XI, and I remember his scoring at least two goals against the boys by prodigious scissor kicks which bought the house down at the time.

I knew Ralph as a generous and understanding friend who helped to make me, a young man in his first job, feel welcome, and part of a wonderful School community which he had himself done much to help create. Boys who knew him well have appreciated far better than I what he did for Ottershaw. I hope many will write in and give a fuller and more personal picture of R.G.W. than my hurried words have been able to do.

By Pat Cowan
For this edition of The Gazette I thought I would reflect on some of the good works that Ralph White brought to Ottershaw School over a period of nearly 30 years. He came to Ottershaw in 1949 after teaching for two years in London following war service in the 48th. Royal Tanks and then gaining a degree at Magdalen College, Oxford. As well as building up a successful French Department, he was responsible for a long series of dramatic productions, starting in March 1950 with ‘Love - The Doctor’ (a comedy after Moliere’s ‘L’Amour Medecin’ starring Brian Brazier, Robert Robbins, Colin Harms, Michael Cross, John Rose, John Casparis, Reginald Green, Michael Buley, Ian Hislop, Michael Lamerton, David Scott, Brian Sturge, Peter Glucksmann and Stephen Church. This was part of a production by the Dramatic Society and Choir called ‘An Entertainment’. Many of these thespians went on to appear in ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ in 1951, ‘Twelfth
Night’ in 1952, ‘Arms and the Man’ in 1953, ‘The Rivals’ in 1954. Ralph continued to produce plays at Ottershaw until 1965 when John Furlonger, who as a student first appeared on the Ottershaw stage as Viola in ‘Twelfth Night’, and then as a teacher took over to produce ‘King Henry IV Part 1’. 

Ralph continued to stay around helping his wife Freda with the wardrobe, a job she had carried out since the first production in 1950. Making up the team were Messrs. Oettinger, Burrows and Johnson handling the set construction, scenery painting/front of house and lighting respectively. A further activity which took place in his classroom appropriately sited under the stage was the production of the Ottershaw Weekly News. In edition No. 1 dated 13th. January, 1951 it was stated “The Magazine subcommittee met on the 11th. December, 1950 to discuss the publication of a magazine in the Lent term 1951. A weekly issue, namely the Ottershaw Weekly News, was decided upon and the following elections were made: Editor,M.N. Pratt; Manager, Mr. R.G. White; Sports Editor, I.G. Hislop; News Editor, R.T. Chapman; Publications Manager, D.W. Dale; Art Editor, I.F. Sharp; Workshops Editor, R.R. Montgomery”. In this first edition there was a tailpiece signed by RGW as follows: “In future numbers of the Ottershaw Weekly News we shall have room for contributions of a literary nature - articles, short stories (very short), poems, etc. If you feel the urge to write something of general interest, do so, and give your efforts to either the Editor or the Manager. All contributions will be carefully considered, so now is your chance. Go to it!”.

The Weekly News continued successfully for many years nurtured by Ralph, but it should also be remembered that the forerunner to this was the monthly ‘Ottershaw School Magazine’. This was also edited by Malcolm Pratt with Mr. A.F. Buttery as Chairman and Mr. J.H. Burrows as Art Advisor.  This magazine came into being with the start of the school in 1948 but there were sometimes difficulties in the production - e.g. in the June 1949 edition Malcolm started by  apologising for the fact “that this issue has been postponed for a week. It has, I’m afraid, been unavoidable, and it has been due to a shortage of paper. We had hoped to include a lino cut in this issue, but that has also had to be postponed owing to another shortage, this time printing ink”. In this modern day and age it is easy to forget the difficulties that the country was going through, some items were still rationed at that time! Finally, I personally have to thank Mr. White for
starting me off on my career with Cable and Wireless. Somewhere along the line I had concentrated too much on metalwork and technical drawing, and faild to take too much interest in English Language. A GCE pass turned out to be an absolute requirement if I wanted to follow an overseas career with C&W. Having failed my GCE English in Summer 1954 abd 1955, I was given a crash English course by Mr. White. This included a deep penetration course of reading including several Jane Austen books, and as a result I gained a satisfactory pass in Winter 1955 which allowed me to start my career with C&W in January 1956. Thank you very much, Ralph White, and I still continue to work on my French  conversation. I suspect I again did not give my full attention to the subject - and where was my first overseas posting in Autumn 1957 - why, to Frenchspeaking Mauritius! Serves me right!