The 6th of June 2014 was not just the 70th anniversary of D-Day, but also the 100th anniversary of my father, George John Cumella. My father died as long ago as the year 2000, but I think about him every day. I had considered writing here about his life, but it has proved difficult to make a narrative of a mass of incoherent memories of my father, from when I was a child and an adult. Almost all of these are fond memories of a kindly man who loved his wife, children and grandchildren. But there are also memories of the quirks of behaviour that mark one personality from another. I can not fit these into a single short account, and so I will speak instead of one part of my father’s life that says much about him and his influence on me.
My father came from a reasonably prosperous family that lost its money. The only secondary education available was at a local fee-paying school. He passed the exam for a free place, but ‘failed’ the interview. As a result, he left school at 14 with no qualifications and did not become apprenticed. He worked in a wide variety of unskilled occupations, including lorry driving (before any driving test was required), chauffeuring, coal-hauling, and being a clerk in the local workhouse. He had psoriasis, and so was found medically unfit to serve in the forces in the Second World War. At some point after the war, he completed a trade qualification as a welder, and from then until retirement worked at the Land Rover factory. I remember him cycling to work through rain and snow, with his sandwiches in an old bag across his shoulder and a beret on his head.
Nowadays, my father would have gone to university and been a good student. He had considerable powers of application, loved reading and had a great respect for learning. In the absence of formal schooling, he educated himself by reading the books in our small local public library. Each Saturday afternoon, he would visit the Shirley Library and stay until the desperate staff begged him to leave at closing time. He was initially limited to the maximum of four books/lender allowed by the library. But as first myself and then my brother went to university and left home, he took over our tickets (as well as our mother’s tickets) and would return home on Saturday with a collection of 16 books. No-one could read this many at once, and so they were renewed from month to month. I suspect that he took pleasure from simply having the books around him.
My father’s respect for learning combined with his own lack of educational opportunity made him transfer his frustrated ambition to his children. My brother and I were sent to the best local grammar schools and were encouraged to apply for university. Secondary school was for me a miserable experience, but I still became a sort of educational guided missile, eventually collecting three university degrees. My father did not seem to have any clear ambitions for us after we left university - it was sufficient that our education gave us the chance to escape work on an assembly-line, and he was very pleased that we had escaped his fate and had succeeded in finding well-paid white-collar jobs.
See also: Surviving school
My father came from a reasonably prosperous family that lost its money. The only secondary education available was at a local fee-paying school. He passed the exam for a free place, but ‘failed’ the interview. As a result, he left school at 14 with no qualifications and did not become apprenticed. He worked in a wide variety of unskilled occupations, including lorry driving (before any driving test was required), chauffeuring, coal-hauling, and being a clerk in the local workhouse. He had psoriasis, and so was found medically unfit to serve in the forces in the Second World War. At some point after the war, he completed a trade qualification as a welder, and from then until retirement worked at the Land Rover factory. I remember him cycling to work through rain and snow, with his sandwiches in an old bag across his shoulder and a beret on his head.
Nowadays, my father would have gone to university and been a good student. He had considerable powers of application, loved reading and had a great respect for learning. In the absence of formal schooling, he educated himself by reading the books in our small local public library. Each Saturday afternoon, he would visit the Shirley Library and stay until the desperate staff begged him to leave at closing time. He was initially limited to the maximum of four books/lender allowed by the library. But as first myself and then my brother went to university and left home, he took over our tickets (as well as our mother’s tickets) and would return home on Saturday with a collection of 16 books. No-one could read this many at once, and so they were renewed from month to month. I suspect that he took pleasure from simply having the books around him.
My father’s respect for learning combined with his own lack of educational opportunity made him transfer his frustrated ambition to his children. My brother and I were sent to the best local grammar schools and were encouraged to apply for university. Secondary school was for me a miserable experience, but I still became a sort of educational guided missile, eventually collecting three university degrees. My father did not seem to have any clear ambitions for us after we left university - it was sufficient that our education gave us the chance to escape work on an assembly-line, and he was very pleased that we had escaped his fate and had succeeded in finding well-paid white-collar jobs.
See also: Surviving school
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