Uniting in Gratitude and Celebration: The RGS Commemoration Service
On Tuesday all four of the RGS Schools joined together in the sanctuary of Worcester Cathedral for the annual Commemoration Service. The Service is an opportunity for the Family of Schools to mark our long history, express our gratitude to our Founders and Benefactors and celebrate all that our pupils achieve.
RGS Worcester pupils from Years Seven to Ten and Lower Sixth Form students walked from the School to the Cathedral and were joined by fellow pupils from RGS Dodderhill, RGS The Grange and RGS Springfield.
The Revd Dr Stephen Edwards from Worcester Cathedral led the service which included a reading and prayers read by pupils representing the four Schools. An inspirational address was given by Guest of Honour, Mr David Richmond CBE, a former pupil at RGS from 1980-1985 who was awarded a CBE in 2012 for services to wounded, injured and sick servicemen and their families. Choirs from the two Senior Schools joined voices to sing ‘Stand by Me’ as part of the service, and three other choral pieces were performed by the RGS Worcester Senior Choir and Chamber Choir, including a rousing rendition of The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’.
Assistant Head (Co-curricular, Planning & Events), Mr Matt Parker, said: “The Commemoration Service is an important event in the School calendar, when all four Schools come together to honour the memory of all those who have played key roles in their founding and development. As the sixth oldest school in the world, many people have contributed to our continued successes. Commemoration is therefore an important annual opportunity for current members of the RGS community to show our appreciation and respect to those benefactors who have come before”.
Executive Headmaster of The RGS Family of Schools, Mr John Pitt, said: “David’s words really resonated with me because they explained all that our Schools continue to be all about: developing quiet confidence and character, courage to stand up for what we believe is right, and giving reserves of strength and commitment when needed. It reminded me that, while modern education has changed very significantly, some of the core values at the heart of what we do remain the same: to develop potential, prepare young people for their bright futures, strengthening their resilience to deal with whatever life throws at them, and making them fully aware of their role in society and their community”.
David’s daughter, Clara kindly joined us and we held a lunch before the Service with some of our benefactors and donors who support several of our Bursary-holders so that these pupils can attend RGS. This was a lovely event organised by the Foundation staff and was a chance to catch up before enjoying the Service in the Cathedral.
Our grateful thanks go to the Dean and Chapter for continuing to support our Commemoration Service being held in Worcester Cathedral, especially appropriate since RGS Worcester was originally founded in the precincts of the Cathedral back around 685 AD.
Thank you to David Richmond and Clara and to our donors for joining us, and to Governors, parents, teachers and pupils for attending the Service. Thank you also to our excellent readers and to our very talented choirs whose final modern rendition of ‘Hey Jude’ accompanied by electric guitar and drums, raised a smile on everyone’s faces and reminded us that our School may be one of the oldest in the world, but, as our motto says, we not only ‘remember the past, we cherish the future’, too!
David has kindly provided us with the text of his speech so that parents and alumni can enjoy his words as well:
“It is an enormous pleasure to speak to you all this morning. I attended the School from 1980 – 1985, which seems, in fact is a very long time ago, quite literally in another century, but in the context of the Royal Grammar School, it is only yesterday. I remember as a young pupil looking at some of the older teachers and wondering if they had been here when the school was founded in 685 and now as I stand here today I wonder how many of the younger pupils are wondering the same about me!
I had a wonderful time at the Grammar School and I don’t say that due to looking back through rose tinted glasses; I loved it at the time. I wasn’t a particularly academic pupil, instead being far more interested in playing rugby, football or cricket or indeed any other sport that was on offer, but neither was I daft; just a bit idle I would say. In fact, I probably verged on very idle! But why did I enjoy school so much; because it was full of opportunities and friendships and we were supported by some wonderful staff who I remain in touch with to this day.
The school urged us to seize the many opportunities presented to us, to challenge ourselves mentally and physically, to form friendships and importantly to support each other. We were expected to be on time, to be smart, to be comfortable in conversation with anyone, about anything, to be courteous and to put others before ourselves. Any hint of selfishness or self-promotion at the expense of others was quickly highlighted often with humour but with the point always starkly clear.
The school provided us with a well-rounded education and developed us as young men with character and something to talk about, who could shake a hand firmly, be comfortable in any company, could laugh at ourselves and with others, could hold our own in debate and who knew the value of service be that to our community, to our clubs or to our families and friends.
When I look back on this and how it helped me as I made my way through life, I realise that while the school supported us to do as well as possible in our academic studies, it also equipped us with the skills and understanding to do well at life because there is far more to life than simply good exam grades. Please don’t interpret that as me suggesting that good qualifications and good exam grades aren’t important – they are as they give you freedom of choice – but I want to place that in context. There are lots of young people who leave school and university with great exam grades or wonderful degrees – thousands of you do this every year and you will too, I’m sure – so its your ability to hold a conversation, talk intelligently about the world, be curious about what is going on around you, to be a great team player and to contribute to your community and have interests beyond work that will mark you out and serve you well. And for many hundreds of years, the School has been doing that so very well.
And that reminds me of a young lady called Sarah who I interviewed for her first job post-university. Sarah had great A levels and a very good degree but we didn’t talk about those; we spent 40 mins talking about the year she had spent, post-university, travelling alone in South America. What we discussed told me she was independent, adaptable, comfortable in any environment and a problem solver and much else, so I offered her a job, but not the job she applied for. Some days later a letter arrived from Sarah thanking me for the offer but making clear, very politely, that she didn’t want that job, she wanted the one she applied for and she then said why she would be good at it. Some might think that was a bit ‘necky’ and in some ways I suppose it was; but I really liked it and in my mind she was exactly the sort of bright, determined, independent young woman with some experience of life that we wanted on the team so I offered her the job she wanted. So, while her great A levels an degree vitally got her the interview, it was her character, what she had to talk about and what it told me about her as a person that secured the job for her. She has gone on to do very well too!
I had already passed my Regular Commissions Board by the time I left school and started at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in January 1986. It is there that I met CSgt Robinson of the Parachute Regiment, a veteran of the Falklands Island campaign and a hard, uncompromising man but one who read his new charges extraordinarily well. He was a man of Leeds and some might describe him as ‘earthy’! He told me some years later that he saw in me plenty of potential but an underlying idleness so he quickly got on top of that – and I can tell you, he really did get on top of it! This was the start of a military career that I loved and that lasted 26 years. I was lucky enough to serve with some outstanding men and women some of whom came from very priviledged backgrounds, some who had a background much like mine and many, many more who had not been fortunate enough to enjoy the education and support that we had.
The private soldiers and NCOs I served with came from some of the most deprived areas of inner city Glasgow and its surrounding areas. They were tough, challenging, staggeringly funny, resilient and amazing team players. But most of them, by which I mean well-over 80% had left school at 16 with few or no qualifications and many of them had never really attended school. It was also the first time that I met an adult who couldn’t read or write, which was a culture shock having come from this school. For the majority though, their reading age would be in single figures and their academic attainment levels were very low. But their potential was huge. They certainly weren’t stupid, indeed many were incredibly sharp and what the Army did for them was to provide them with leadership and role models, it invested in them as people and gave them career options both long term and short and it challenged them physically and mentally. Crucially though, it developed them as people.
I believe that role-modelling and leadership were the key factors in this. At school and at Sandhurst, it was made very clear that good leaders understand that leadership is not about them; it is not about self-promotion and personal advancement or showing off; it is about nurturing and developing the people under your command, about understanding them as individuals and what makes them tick and about investing in them individually and as a team. Yet, at the same time, it is all about you as the leader. It is about how you conduct yourself, your attitude and behaviours, the role-modelling you do and whether you walk the walk and don’t just talk the talk. It is about service, service to others in the pursuit of a higher goal. You place the completion of the task and the interests of the team ahead of yourself. And this extends to everything – the feeding queue is a great example. When you’re away on operations or on exercise, the officers (the leaders) always wait for the soldiers to collect their food before they collect theirs. This is a small and simple example of the way that leaders should behave; your people come first not you.
Sadly, my military career came to an abrupt end when I was seriously injured in a firefight in Afghanistan in the summer of 2008 while I was the Commanding Officer of an Air Assault Battle Group in a dusty town called Musa Qaleh in Helmand Province. I was shot and the bullet managed to shatter my right femur and remove 10cm of bone in the process. I was very lucky I didn’t lose my leg (in fact they nearly took it off in the field hospital but thankfully didn’t).
I started 4 years of reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation and I learned a lot about myself during this hugely challenging time where I had the support of a wonderful family, great surgeons and inspirational rehab staff at the Defence Rehabilitation Centre who stood by me throughout the roller-coaster ride that is a long-term complex rehab.
I should say here that 2 of the first people to visit me in hospital in Birmingham were teachers from my time at this school many, many years after I had left.
In the end though I had to leave the Army and as I left I was fortunate to be asked by Help for Heroes to join them to create their recovery services for the wounded, injured and sick service people and their families and it was a wonderfully challenging period where we took an idea and turned it into a reality in a staggeringly short period of time. We opened the first recovery centre 17 weeks after refurbishment works started on a run down Grade 2 star listed building and within 2 years had opened a further 3 centres, created support programmes, recruited staff and helped literally thousands of people in need. What we were doing was meaningful; it was about helping people, people in need. People who needed help because they had been wounded while serving this country.
It is no surprise that we talk about military ‘service’ – about serving – because that is what service-people do. We serve the people of this country, often in far flung, dusty parts of the world out of the public eye. It can be thrilling, exciting, dangerous, fun, immensely challenging and much else and you share these times with people of all backgrounds. You share the fun, you share the risks, the highs and the lows, the laughs and occasionally the tears. You support each other and you see people at their most magnificent and their most vulnerable. You get stripped back to your bare metal and you form friendships and bonds that last a lifetime with people you know you call could at any time, about anything and they would be with you in a flash, with bells on.
And this leads me back to where I started. That the Royal Grammar School set me up as a young man to take on the challenges that life was going to throw at me. It embedded in me a strong sense of service – service to others and not myself, it ensured I was comfortable in any company, that I had things to talk about and that while many of the things I would do would be very serious and I would carry huge responsibility, I was able to carry those responsibilities lightly, to laugh at myself and with others and to generally do quite well at life. It taught me that the measure of you is not how you handle to good days, when everything is going well and the plaudits are flowing in because any fool can handle that – it’s easy. It’s about how you handle the bad days, when the chips are down, things aren’t going well and the team is looking to you for direction. It gave me perspective. For that is what great schools do, they set you up well for life and while great exam grades are important, in today’s somewhat volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, your character will carry you through. So take the opportunities this great school offers to you, keep a smile on your face, be quietly self-confident in your abilities, serve your friends and your community and make sure that you enjoy life”.
David Richmond, CBE, RGS pupil, 1980-1985