Andrew Wentworth Ping

Variety is particularly important in the week-day services. The Head Master, Mr. Cummin, Mr. Duncan, Mark Driffield and Barry Creasy have each been responsible for a week's worship during the last two terms. Mark Driffield (with the Young Farmers' Club) also organised the Harvest Thanksgiving. How grateful we are to all of them!

The wind players, too, are taking an increasing share in the services. The Brass Quartet is splendid for the special occasion such as Remembrance Sunday and the Queen's Accession, and the wood-wind ensemble blends with the voices in a most satisfactory way. Let us hear more!

Four of our five visiting preachers were from the academic world. In the Christmas Term the Public Schools were represented by the Rev. Gordon Scott, Chaplain of Pocklington School, the Universities by Professor Kathleen Jones of York, the Choir Schools by the Headmaster of the Minster Song School, the Rev. Bevan Wardrobe. This term the Rev. John Freeth, the Anglican Chaplain of York University, led us in a service of his devising which included two short sketches and a reading given by members of the Sixth Form. Our other visiting preacher was the Rev. M. K. Rumalshah, a Pakistani priest who has come to this country as one of the area secretaries of the Church Missionary Society. We are most grateful to all of them for the time and trouble they took for us.

On March 9th the Bishop of Selby confirmed 22 Peterites and 22 Olavites. We were able to welcome them at a wonderful Family Communion the next morning, at which the Bishop presided. During the service he dedicated the glorious altar frontal which Mr. Gaastra has woven for us and Miss Alexander has so skilfully set up. This beautiful work should be an inspiration to generations of future Peterites. We cannot thank these two gifted artists enough for this labour of love, and we are very grateful to the number of Old Peterites and parents who have so kindly contributed towards the cost of it. There is so much for which to be thankful! I cannot end these notes without a mention of the Rev. Ronald Darroch, who has spent a term with us as a student teacher. Have we ever before had a student teacher who was also a clergyman? He has involved himself to the full in the life of the Chapel (to say nothing of the School) and gave us two Lent services on Wednesday evenings which will not be quickly forgotten. We wish him all happiness in his work for our Lord, wherever he may find himself.

N.H.K.-W.

A Biographical Note and a Personal Appreciation

Andrew Wentworth Ping, universally known as "Went", was born in 1890 in Leeds, where his father held a curacy, but most of his boyhood and youth were spent in the small village of Thorpe, near Newark, where his father became Rector. From there he attended Nottingham High School before going on to Oxford, to what is now St. Catharine's College. At Oxford he rowed for his College, but also devoted much of his time to the O.T.C., from which he went directly into the Army on a regular commission in the 2nd, Bn., The York and Lancaster Regiment. Thus he was in France soon after the outbreak of war, in that most dangerous of situations, a subaltern in an infantry battalion. He was wounded in 1914, and again on 7th February, 1915, when he was for many hours in 5

a shell hole in "No Man's Land" until a stretcher party was able to bring him in after nightfall. This wound left him with a permanent leg injury, and many Olavites will remember the curious spring contraption attached to his boot which he wore for many years until modern methods found a more efficient but less picturesque substitute. This wound, severe though it was, did not put an end to his Army service, and when he had recovered sufficiently he was posted to the Durham Light Infantry and spent the remainder of the war on coastal defence at Sunderland. It is perhaps appropriate to mention at this point that in the Second World War he joined the Home Guard on the day it was formed and was a company commander until he retired in 1942. In 1918 he married Margaret Varley, a school friend of his sister and in the following years they had three children—Betty, and two boys, Alan and Hugh, who in due course became Olavites and Peterites. In 1919 he left the Army and went into industry, working in Coventry. This gave him no satisfaction and he decided to go in for teaching, and so he came to St. Peter's in 1921, and a year later moved to St. Olave's, as master-in-charge. At that time St. Olave's had two boarding houses, the boys' end being where the Clifton Bingo Hall now is, and the residence the house now occupied by Barclay's Bank, next door. In 1935, the Grove, which had occupied the house now called St. Olave's, was closed, and the Pings moved across the road to the house with which they were associated for so many years. "Went" retired in 1955. His services to St. Peter's and St. Olave's are recorded and appreciated elsewhere in this journal.

Outside the school he became a very well-known figure in York and elsewhere through his three great interests, natural history, meteorology, and Freemasonry. He was on the committee of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society and became a Life Vice-President; as Hon. Secretary of the York Field Naturalists he did much to revivify that society; he was a Founder Member of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Trust and chairman of the management Committee of its Moorlands reserve from 1955 to 1972; he was a Life Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, a member of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union and on the Board of the York Waterworks Company. It is small wonder that during his retirement he found himself a very busy man. It was only in the last year or two that he began to reduce his commitments.

A biographical note serves its purpose, but does nothing to convey the warmth and humanity which were "Went's" outstanding characteristics. It does however hint at the impression of kindly vigour that he left on all who knew him or who simply met him. For many, no doubt, the first impression was almost painful, for he did everything with zest, including shaking hands, and he had a powerful grip. Indeed, if only one of his attributes could be mentioned, it would be his zest, whether in his teaching, his out-of-school activities, his shooting, his work for learned societies, his interest in the plants and wild life of the countryside, or his hatred of grey squirrels and crows. Woe betide any of these who came within his sight—one ill-advised grey squirrel once appeared in a tree outside the room where he was teaching and within five minutes was shot and on his desk, the object of a natural history lesson. To be outof-doors with him was an instructive and fascinating experience, especially on the botanical side, but his knowledge of fungi was the most profound of all, a knowledge which was proved, like that of the pudding, in the eating, for he was always prepared to back his judgement by consumption, and he never erred. He was a more than competent shot, and his pleasure when he brought down a difficult bird was undisguised. Indeed, one of 6

his most endearing characteristics was his expression of genuine pleasure at his success or those of his family or his pupils. Rightly, he had no fear of being suspected of self-satisfaction.

One of the St. Olave's houses is named after him. His portrait hangs in the entrance hall of St. Olave's, a good portrait in that it suggests the benign man of principle—for by nature, aided no doubt by upbringing, he was a man of principle; lying in particular earned his severest strictures. But perhaps the most appropriate tangible memorial to "Went" is the pair of horse chestnut trees he planted at the far side of the First XV pitch; they sum up not only his love of nature but his love of tradition and his understanding of young boys, for he planted them not only to beautify the grounds but to serve tradition and Olavites by ensuring a supply of conkers for the Autumn game. His intangible memorial is the influence he has had on the lives of generations of Olavites, and that is the best of all.

L.C. LeT.

MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR ANDREW VVENTWORTH PING

The Address by the Revd. Canon D. V. Hewitt M.A. (O.P.) In Chapel, Saturday, 24th November, 1974

I count it a great privilege that I have been charged with the duty of speaking to you this morning in this chapel—this chapel which has meant so much to me, and indeed to many of you, who as boys worshipped within its walls—this chapel which was, for Wentworth Ping, the very heart of St. Peter's School.

We have just sung the great hymn of Christian triumph and hope, with its oft-repeated Alleluias. Let Alleluia be the theme of my words. Alleluia—Praise the Lord.

For we have come together, not to listen to a memoir of all the great deeds, or of the great character of Wentworth—I hope that someone will provide us with some form of written remembrance—but we have come here to praise the Lord for a life which we have been privileged to know, and whose example we should hope to follow.

Praise the Lord for Wentworth the teacher. There are many in this chapel this morning who will testify, with me, to the excellence of the training we received at his hands. Just think for one moment of the battalions of little boys whose characters he moulded, and to whom he was "in loco parentis". Life after life, generation after generation of young lives who, in those thirty-three years of his teaching ministry here, he infected with his knowledge, his faith and his power to communicate happiness to others. Generation after generation of men who will rise up and call him blessed. Alleluia—Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord for Wentworth the naturalist. All who came across him in any place where the birds sang or flowers bloomed were very soon his willing pupils as he shared with them his vast knowledge of what was to him, and soon to us, a wonderland of fauna and flora, whose enchantment he could make so thrilling. One of my great delights, in these latter years, was to walk with him in his beloved "Moorlands" as he progressed through glade and spinney, with crook in one hand and gun under the other arm, pointing out the habitat of the woodpecker or taking a "pot shot" at any marauding grey squirrel which might endanger his paradise. 7

A. WENTWORTH PING, ESQ.

Photo: Herbert Speed

In the beauty and wonder of nature Wentworth found the bounty of God the Creator, and he felt the urge to know and to conserve. A founder member of the Yorkshire Naturalists Trust, which was originally formed to preserve Askham Bog, he foresaw, even in 1946, the future possibilities of expansion, and in these latter years was enormously proud of being an Honorary Life Vice-President of that far flung organisation which his foresight and imagination had nurtured, and which has done so much to conserve and enrich God's bounty. Alleluia—Praise the Lord.

And we shall want to praise the Lord for many other facets of the life and activities of Wentworth Ping—in rowing, in meteorology, in helping to supply York with its water, in Freemasonry—in all of which he left his mark of determination and foresight.

But most of all perhaps, for us who are here, we praise the Lord for the friendship of Wentworth which has meant so much to so many of us. That thrilling handshake, which was one of his trademarks was the "hall-mark" at once of his sincerity and of his generosity. Everyone whom he came across mattered to Wentworth. He had no malice for any and, as one of you told me the other day, "Nobody ever spoke in a derogatory way about him". He not only knew all his "Old Boys", he took care to follow their progress and took every opportunity to ask after them and their wives and their children. All came within the ambience of his affection and his care. He was that type of exciting character which is getting rarer and rarer in our machine-made world of today, and he was that type of Christian character who, following the example of his Lord and Master, gave and gave and gave, without any thought of self. All his life he lived for others, pouring out his love, his affection, his knowledge and his care without stint. His love was indeed an "agape". Alleluia—Praise the Lord.

Here, in this hallowed place, we thank God upon every remembrance of Wentworth Ping. Here, in this hallowed place, he came constantly and regularly to meet his Lord, whom then he saw through a glass darkly. Now he has gone from us to be with his Lord, to meet his Pilot face to face, and it is surely not irreverent to suppose that that sincere handshake, that outpoured love and that tremendous voice will still be his trademark in the heavenly places—for indeed they stand, not only for the things of Wentworth, but also for the things of God. Alleluia—Praise the Lord_

ANDREW WENTWORTH PING (1890-1973)

A Footnote

My first meeting with Wentworth Ping was in April 1937, when I arrived at the School to take over the Headmastership. I was naturally excited at the thoughts of what this new life would mean to me, and at the same time very anxious to meet those who were to be my colleagues. The recent events leading up to the resignation of my predecessor after only two terms had not unnaturally increased that anxiety.

Wentworth's welcome, and particularly his handshake, did the trick! No long speeches, no protestations of loyal support, were either made or were necessary. Here was one on whom I knew I—and more important, the School—could depend. Here was a live and active Preparatory School in good heart. The boys and staff would surely capture their Headmaster's enthusiasm, and it was not very long before I had overwhelming confirmation of this.