A LOST EXPERT IN TALK MANAGEMENT
David
Ogilvie Crane
July 12th, 1939 - Nov. 12th, 2012
See David's own words of his time at Red Hill and following years click here
scroll to the bottom of this page for additional photos
Being
just three years older than David at his death brings home to me John Donne's
injunction not to send for whom the bell tolls, for with his loss goes a small
part of me. After the post-Butler embellishment of grammar school to Otto Shaw's
maladjusted Red Hill, with neither written constitution nor age limits, acceptance
conditions imposed ages ranged strictly between 11 and 16 - and appropriate examinations
for those stuck to the course and our wild home became more subtly a school. Under
the reform David joined us 4 months prior to his 12th birthday and left early
after three years; but not as a failure or in disgrace. He was a rare bird leaving
Shaw's nest before full fledging, to continue his education at a real school without
derogatory labels and with the facilities to head him into engineering at which
he was to prove successful. In 1971, at Stoke Golding in Leicestershire he founded
Crane Electronics, a company specialising in torque analysis and management. The
company expanded in 1984 to encompass a sister in Illinois. He eventually sold
both to pursue other engineering interests including Compressed Natural Gas (Gasfill
Ltd, of Leicester) driving a Smart car textually emblazoned with the product and
easily identified by the "writing all over it", as his wife Valerie
observed. I thought it a better indication of that car's ability to contain a
large and exuberant man. Both extant companies and subsequent subsidiaries have
easily found web pages; and I like to think that without appropriate facilities
even his brief exposure to Red Hill stood him in good stead.
Leaving
East Sutton 60 years ago this year, I thus knew him as a junior for just a year
- three years below my learning stream and nearly outside the five-year patina
of my own Red Hill shell. But we were an age-blind family, and a day trip in my
last summer (1953) is remembered by the accompanying snap on Camber Sands. I hold
the company folding Kodak, as if in charge - made tall by standing on a beach
stump. David is several faces to my left - a hand on his shoulder constraining
an unlikely assault on our paparazzo.
Other reasons for my memories of
him at Red Hill include the closeness of his Leicestershire home - Cossington,
to Nottinghamshire - whence I came - and with more boys from the Home Counties
than beyond such neighbourly geography seemed important to many of us at the time.
We had each also suffered evil "schooling" in Norfolk, but at different
times, under the "management" of one Humphrey Fenn and wife (pray let
their offsprings sue). More recently we exchanged emails on the impact on our
subsequent lives by these nasties - who had also scarred the mind of at least
one other Red Hill contemporary. Between us, as we blessed Red Hill, we wondered
if independent schools could ever again be run by such inhuman people - although
it is clear from David being three years my junior that their activities survived
the 1944 Education Act - after being part of its cause. Perhaps the East Anglian
Fenns had a more profound effect on us than East Sutton's Shaw - or possibly they
inured us to Red Hill.
A whole lifetime later we were reunited through
Toddington's Red Hill archive and the internet; and we shared much time together
in Nottingham and at his rather enigmatic Georgian farmhouse in Lutterworth -
where I first met Valerie. After all the years he was still devoted to Leicestershire.
There were also the many hours as his passenger between Leicester and Toddington
and back, including enjoyable meals when we bunked off to Winchcombe. I declined
his offered lift back to Leicester on a massive motor-tricycle for which I was
physically, mentally and sartorially unprepared. I've since deeply regretted my
geriatric cowardice as shortly after he and Valerie moved to another farmhouse
in Sussex and I never saw him again.
His Lutterworth home workshop
contained an "antique" long-case clock he had built to test a pendulum
movement of his own design, representing an ambition to replicate commercially
to attract wealthy collectors. With his typical suasive charm he induced me to
think of ideas for a brochure to be aimed at those likely to buy without asking
the price, and my incomplete notes include internet references to a 19th century
New York clockmaker called Crane. I was withholding that as a surprise - a delight
now lost forever. What fun we would have had with it - and I can imagine Otto
Shaw's ethereal chortle supplementing our whimsy, although David's clock could
have made the American original a forgery before the fact.
During PETT's
Red Hill archive and working weekends that drew us together he encouraged me to
cultivate my dislocated memories of life at East Sutton. His insistence, applied
through an ebullient charm reminiscent of Shaw himself, was successful - and the
book when published will be dedicated to both.
Many lives end
with an irony, and with David it was that after a lifetime of loyalty to Leicestershire
his retirement to Crowborough lasted only enough for him to receive the fateful
diagnosis that was to deprive him of enjoying his new county for the time he deserved.
I will miss him very much, as I know will all who met him through Toddington and
appreciated his contributions to our discussions on residential therapy for disturbed
children.
Ralph Gee
January
2013
Acknowledgments:
1. Valerie Crane
and sons Matthew, Harry & George for corrections as well as submitting additional
information
2. Carol Tamplin of Crane Electronics who kindly sent all the
photos on this page