My friend Alma Girling, who has died aged 100, worked for many years as a teacher and liked to create an environment in which each child could be happy and fulfilled. After her retirement she retrained as a counsellor.
Born in London, the daughter of Alma (nee Haynes) and John, she was the only girl in a family of four children, and delighted in playing hopscotch, conkers and five stones. Riding the shire horses that pulled the wagons of her father’s east London estate agency and removal business was a special treat.
Alma loved music and reading, although she did not enjoy school. At 18, her choices were limited and although she dreamed of being a missionary in Madagascar, she studied at a Church of England teacher training college, and began teaching in Dagenham, east London, before the second world war.
In 1949, Alma became head teacher of an infant school in east London, where she worked happily for a decade, putting her teaching ideas into practice. Then, in 1958, drawn towards India and looking for a new challenge, she set sail on the three-week journey to Calcutta (Kolkata), to take on a class of five-year-olds. Later, she developed a mixed nationality school of 150 children attached to a new steel mill in Durgapur, West Bengal, and was presented to the Queen when she toured India in 1961.
Returning to Britain in the late 1960s, Alma took a job at Balls Park teacher training college in Hertford. On retirement, she retrained as a counsellor and moved to Devon, first to Sidford, then to Sidmouth, volunteeriing her services. She was interested in music, opera and ballet, and was a regular visitor to local theatres. She championed many charities: for children, the under-privileged and local young people.
Alma travelled extensively, visiting many countries and, for her 95th birthday, visited me on the Greek island of Syros.
She spent her last years in a penthouse flat in Sidmouth, enjoying stunning sea views. She had a large party to celebrate her 100th birthday, for which friends and family travelled from near and far.
Over the years, she said, she had “delved into Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and science, and began to formulate a philosophy of my own ... Life is invisible, intangible, indivisible – no beginning, no ending.”
Alma’s brothers Richard, George and Harold predeceased her. She is survived by two nephews and two nieces.
