My dad, John Hilsum, who has died aged 72, was, depending on how you knew him, a fearsome sporting competitor, an expert educator, an unparalleled administrator of recreational sport, a community man or a fantastic parent and grandparent.
John had a wickedly dry sense of humour, and when, in the New Year’s honours for 2016, he was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to cricket and his local community on the Isle of Wight, he rebuffed any congratulations by telling people how disappointed he was that it had been given to him by “a bloody Tory government”. He was actually immensely proud.
He was the son of Len, a civil servant, and Dorothy, a shop assistant, and grew up in rural Hampshire. John went to Perins school, Alresford, then Southampton Technical College, before training to be a teacher at King Alfred’s College, Winchester, and gaining a master’s in education at Keele University.
He began his teaching career at John Cleveland college in Leicester, but he and my mum, Margaret, whom he married in 1966, eventually made their home on the Isle of Wight. He combined roles as a woodwork teacher at what was then Ventnor middle school with a job at the island’s teachers’ centre – a resource aimed at improving the skills of teachers.
Improving education standards continued to be a theme in his later career, when he worked tirelessly on behalf of the British Council and the Department of International Development to help develop education systems in countries in Africa and the Caribbean.
Cricket was the outlet for John’s energies when work allowed, first, as a successful club player, initially in Hampshire and Leicestershire, and subsequently at Ventnor Cricket Club, where he was club captain for nine years and a player for many more. As his playing days drew to a close he developed his interest in coaching and rose to become a staff coach at what was then the National Cricket Association. He was twice honoured by the England and Wales Cricket Board with outstanding service to cricket awards.
Arguably John’s greatest legacies will be through his many hours of work as an administrator of club sport. He oversaw the building of the state-of-the-art Isle of Wight cricket centre, an indoor facility for players of all ages to use. Not content, he worked with his great friend Brian Gardener to build the island’s new county ground at Newclose.
He volunteered at the Rotary Club of Ventnor, on the governing body at St Catherine’s school, and for cricket organisations – and there were countless beneficiaries of his work in the schools he helped to improve around the world.
He is survived by Margaret, their children, Claire, Richard and me, and eight grandchildren.
