My father, George Harvie, who has died aged 99, was an unorthodox teacher whose imagination touched pupils in three areas of Scotland: the once industrial “steelopolis” of Motherwell, the rural Tweed valley, and the housing schemes of west Edinburgh.
The son of Christina (nee Notman), a milliner, and George Harvie, the office manager in Scotland’s largest steelworks, George was born in Motherwell. He was bright but not sole-mindedly academic: rugby, singing, working on the Clyde steamers and courting Isobel Russell, a language teacher, whom he married in 1942, got in the way of a good degree from Glasgow University.
In common with contemporaries, between 1939 and 1945 he was trained and ready in the Highland Light Infantry and RAF for action that never came. At the same time he lost friends such as his cousin Tom Notman, a pacifist medic who won a posthumous MC for evacuating the wounded from Monte Cassino in Italy.
George trained as a teacher at Jordanhill Educational College in 1945-46 before taking a job at New Stevenston school in Motherwell, the first of a series of teaching posts. He inspired co-operation among others while never taking himself too seriously, whether helping create a sports centre to honour the war dead of Dalziel school, Motherwell, turning St Boswells primary school, into a local education hub, or pioneering mature student programmes at what would grow into Edinburgh Napier University. He was a pillar of the Border Liberals around David Steel.
He sang in choirs into his 90s, and when confined to bed by a broken hip was plugged into Radio 3 while surveying the Gala hills.
Isobel died in 2014; George is survived by their three children – Jane, Steve and me.
