My Dad, John Hester, was born in Portsmouth in 1930.
His Father, Jack a civil servant from a naval family
His Mother Blodwyn from rural North Wales
He grew up with his sister Doreen before being evacuated to North Wales to live with his grandmother during the second world war. And then the family moved to Brecon.
He married twice to Hilary and then to Sara for over 40 years He lived and worked in five different countries
His three children were each born on a different continent me in Britain,
Sian in Ethiopia and
Rachel in the Bahamas
I cannot fit such a packed life into just a few minutes so all I can do is provide you with some edited highlights my highlights really.
Dad had an obsession with the news
He was a 24 hour news junkie before 24 hour news had been invented. All of us grew up with the BBC World Service as our childhood soundtrack 1. The World Today
2. Desert Island Discs
3. Sports Report
His short wave radio was his link to the world and Britain woe betide anyone who tampered with the aerial strung out in the back garden in Addis Ababa like a very taut washing line. For his many friends the short wave radio was an additional draw and friends often came round for the big events.
I remember Graham and Sue Dowell, for example, arriving very late for the 1966 World Cup Final, and young teacher friends in the Bahamas coming round for the afternoon to listen to the results of the 1970 general election.
But also the newspapers while I grew up the arrival of The Guardian Weekly or New Statesman was a significant event in the Hester household, replaced in later years by The Spectator and The Times as his political allegiances shifted and he settled in London.
Dad had a seemingly unique ability able to listen to the radio and to read the paper at the same time and take part in a conversation.
I learned my geography of Britain listening to Sports Report with Dad, writing down the football scores and updating the league tables he always looked out for Portsmouth, Pompey, the team of his youth. He made it to this year’s FA Cup semi-final – how he would have loved to be at Wembley last Saturday to see Pompey in the FA Cup Final for the first time since 1939 when he listened to the game on the wireless with his father. Fortunately I wore his lucky cap to the game so Pompey won.
If news was an obsession, amateur dramatics was his addiction. We have no idea how many plays he acted in or directed but it’s certainly in the hundreds. A few weeks ago I asked him how he first got into acting he described having his arm twisted to help out the small English expatriate community in Addis Ababa, he’d never done it before. He soon got the acting bug in his first Shakespeare play Twelfth Night. The opening performance was to over 1000 Ethiopian school students who were studying it for their O’Levels the atmosphere was electric because they knew all the lines, laughed at all the right places, heckled and generally had a whale of a time. He imagined that that was how plays were watched in Shakespeare’s day. The next night was a royal command performance in front of Emperor Haile Selassie and assorted dignitaries a completely different and formal affair.
My earliest recollection of Dad in a play was when he played the dame in a Christmas Pantomime, dressed up in a pink Tutu dancing across the stage and singing about being a Prima Ballerina and a Sugar Plum Fairy. To this day I don’t really know what a Sugar Plum Fairy is. He hid his beard under thick stage makeup.
For me, as a teenager, the most intense play he performed was Blood Knot by Athol Fugard in the early 70’s in the Bahamas. It was a long, intense and shocking exploration of racism and apartheid in South Africa with only two characters two brothers – one black, the other passing as white. It was a hugely charged, draining and emotional performance and a great triumph.
But Ethiopia was his passion.
He did not know where the country was when he applied for a teaching job way back in 1958. It must have taken courage for him and my mother Hilary still in their 20’s to take a six month old baby into a remote part of the world. And it was very remote in those days before the jet engine, television and International Direct Dialling let alone the internet and mobile phones.
It took 5 flights to actually get there London Frankfurt Athens Cairo Asmara Addis Ababa. He took great pleasure in telling me that I was taken on board the planes in a carry cot balanced on top of the family cutlery knives and forks, the lot.
He described to me his first phone call home at Christmas. Having to listen to the telephone operators of Addis, Khartoum, Rome and London connecting him through to his parents in Mayalls Road, Swansea before eventually hearing his mother’s Welsh accent a million miles away.
Sian was born in the Princess Catherine Tsehai hospital in Addis. During our years in Ethiopia we were never shielded from the poverty all around us. We were reminiscing the other day and both distinctly recall visits to the leper colony I don’t know why we went but I do know that Dad particularly tried to help out people who had recovered from leprosy the social stigma of the disease was strong and we had a succession of gardeners, employed so that they could get a good reference.
As a maths teacher at General Wingate School every year he went off for days at a time to remote areas to carry out entrance exams and came back with tales of shepherd boys having walked for days to take the tests.
For holidays we went camping in the wild. We took everything with us in our little car and drove off the road across the arid dried out land covered in acacia trees and loud with the sounds of cicadas. Dad taught us to swim in Lake Langano I remember Sian really shifting with her water wings. He taught me the rules of cricket while on the coarse sandy beach listening to an England West Indies Test match. Can you blame the local Oromo people, dressed in cured leather and covered in bangles, beads and cowrie shells, stopping by to stare at these weird foreigners, the ferenjis?
I remember long hot three hour drives to visit Sara a Peace Corps volunteer in Shashemane and a massive month-long camping expedition around northern Ethiopia, all 4 of us packed into a tiny Renault 4 stopping at ancient towns, visiting incredible old churches and massive trading markets full of people, camels, goats, noise and smells.
Dad fell in love with Ethiopian culture the Ancient Christianity, the people, the food – Injera and Wot was always a special treat in our house.
Just weeks before he was first diagnosed with cancer Dad went back for a trip with Sara, Rachel and Gez
1. Revisiting Addis and Aksum
2. Lake Tana and Gondar,
3. Walking in the Simian Mountains
He was in his element shaking his shoulders with the waitresses dancing in a Tej Bait, and having a laugh with the shoeshine boys in Debra Markos.
But above all visiting his old ex-student Ato Asfaw Yrmeru who abandoned his classes at General Wingate School to set up a school for street kids and orphans initially under a single tree. They survived terrible famine, the upheaval of revolution and wars now it has over 1400 students with a farm and dairy providing food for the destitute kids. Dad was in awe of Asfaw’s achievements.
This is now the 21st century and I want to read out an email received from Ato Asfaw.
Dear Sara
As I have just been informed of the passing away of my highly esteemed great teacher and humanitarian friend John Hester please accept my great sorrow and grief and convey this to all our mutual friends and acquaintances. I was really shocked and deeply touched when I received the news.
The memory is still fresh in mind when we were young students at the General Wingate School where we all regarded him as a role model, competent instructor and selfless humanitarian both at the classroom level and concerning the activities of all our school life. His humanitarian work has even extended after leaving the school, until his last days.
On behalf of the thousands of needy children, the poorest of the poor families and myself, for whom he devotedly assisted for the good part of his life to help us see a light of hope and meaningful existence, I would like to express again my deepest condolence and grand respect.
Asfaw
Dad’s family was central to his existence with an intense love for us all
For Sara the love of his life and married for over 40 years and who was by his side throughout a really difficult 18 months
For his children very protective, with a fierce pride in our achievements Sian the first to marry and start a family abroad in Switzerland, the Hester way, He was so proud of her and the boys their skiing prowess, military service and future career plans. He so wanted to visit them in their new home.
Rachel the youngest, born in the Bahamas he became a Ballet Dad encouraging her dancing and driving her day after day to lessons for years, and then following her professional dancing career and becoming a ballet connoisseur. And her husband, Gez, who became his pal and a second son.
And for me, always supportive and positive whatever he thought of my choices in life. Chuffed that Ella was already writing plays and practicing for Cinderella in a few weeks.
The weekend before he died we all gathered at the Marie Curie Edenhall Hospice to be with him. The sun was shining, he was in very good form – we actually all had a really nice time. Especially Dad.
Throughout his life Dad always had a deep Christian faith, but it was understated taking us to church throughout his travels, but not forcing us, and linking in with the Anglican community wherever we went. His Christian faith undoubtedly gave him great strength to face life’s challenges and together with Sara he took on the cancer with amazing resilience, especially in the last weeks.
Dad would love to be with us today
he would have wanted to be here surrounded by all his friends and family he would have loved the Christian service
but I think he would have been distinctly uncomfortable with the fuss and attention on him
I picture my Dad with his beard (and his pipe in those days)
Driving us across the Danakil desert below sea level, in the searing heat, and heading for the Red Sea;
Camping in the bush under the massive skies of Ethiopia and Kenya, ablaze with stars at night – and wild animals snuffling nearby or howling across the land,
Snorkelling along the coral reefs of the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean.
What an adventure he gave us
And always the reminder of a real world out there with millions of people scratching a basic existence on this earth he taught us a compassion and respect for the destitute and the poor.
Thank you for coming to remember and honour John Hester, my Dad a good man who led a full life.
Simon Hester
Eulogy
Simon Hester