OLD AZURIANS

From the quiet hills of Wales there has long issued a steady stream of scholars, teachers, counsellors, idealists, who, like the rivers of pure water which pour from those self-same hills and bring life to the English plain, have enriched and increased our common heritage. Roy Evans was of that stream.

 

A man of many interests and wide sympathies, it was almost inevitable that he should become a schoolmaster, as a burning faith in education and its power to liberalise the human mind was the driving force in his life. It provided an outlet for the social and essentially democratic elements in his nature: his work on teachers’ associations, no less than his day-to-day work in the classroom, his keenness on cricket and his interest in the Workers’ Educational Association, all testify to his wide interpretation of education and his vision of the structure as a whole.

 

We of the School, however, will most remember him as a geographer. In the “widening” experience – one of his favourite phrases – that constitutes education, he saw the unique contribution that his chosen subject had to offer, and on occasion he campaigned brilliantly on its behalf. For in his academic, as in his professional life, he was remarkably well-informed and based his judgment upon knowledge of facts and upon deep reflection – a circumstance which made him formidable in debate and which won respect for his opinions. Geography he regarded as the essential key for understanding current political and economic problems; but it is typical of him that he rarely spoke at length about world citizenship: he practiced it.

 

No estimate of him is true, however, which restricts itself to the committee and the classroom. The calm, undemonstrative manner, the impassive countenance – he rarely laughed – only served to hide a generous nature and a keen sense of humour, and to give added effect to a penetrating wit, which never gave offence because it was without malice. Those who could claim him as a friend valued the encouragement which he bestowed as liberally and naturally as the quiet courage that kept him going for so long in illness and anxiety.

 

We grieve over his going, but take inspiration from so much that was noble and lovely in his striving.

 

Richard Edwin Roylance Evans  died 1 July 1952