Funeral held for much-loved teacher
Here is just a small part of the eulogy given at Mr Tickner's funeral by our chaplain Rev'd Sissons.
School tributes
There are not many members of staff at school who have so touched the hearts and minds of all, that former and current pupils, parents, teachers, support staff and head masters have each taken the time to express their deep sadness at his death and to speak with real fondness about his qualities and character.
Non-Teaching staff working behind the scenes wanted to mention his great generosity of spirit and how much it meant to them that he always had the time and a word for everybody; new teachers remember the genuineness of his welcome for them and his expressions of concern about how they were settling in; alumni have spoken of his never-ending patience, his refusal to give up on them while they were at school and his continued interest in them long after they had left.
Amongst the present staff many have delighted to hear him speak with such obvious relish of earlier school days – for instance he would describe the school crier sitting up a tree in the quad leading the chants as the first XV jogged through the serried ranks of students on their way to the rugger pitch.
What people keep coming back to is his wisdom and his humility; his humour and his humanity; his kindness, his courtesy and his gentle spirit; these are the characteristics people don’t want us to forget.
Although Robert was employed to teach languages he was active in so many other areas of school life – for example, he revitalised the Chess Club, he was in charge of the competitive house Wesley for years, he led many thought-provoking assemblies, for a decade he was a much-loved Boarding Housemaster– I’m told that a sure sign of this was the regular practice of the students in his house putting Rob’s small children into the large rubbish bins outside; I wasn’t told if they removed them but I suppose they must have.
He was a stalwart supporter of all the Drama and Musical productions and he initiated and fostered the links with Collegium Josephinum in Bonn, which have for three decades proved so enriching.
With so many fingers in so many pies there was hardly any room within school where Rob was not a frequent and welcome visitor; in the library Nerys and Ann knew him as the ‘third librarian’ because he spent so much time with them and as the tentacles of his archive world stretched into even more vacant spaces around the school.
The Senior Managers confess they were forced to allow him to create the Richards Room to try to contain any further imperialistic ambitions he might have harboured. I visited that Archives room yesterday, into which Robert has poured so much effort and energy over recent years and looking around at all the exhibits it struck me how much joy there is to be found in those old scenes and how much pleasure he must have derived from gathering them together and giving them shape and coherence and showing them off to others.
For him this was not the dead past; this was living history, that makes sense of the present; Robert knew that we are who we are today, because of those who have gone before us, and all of us to some degree are who we are today, because of Robert’s influence upon us and that is s one of the most important things we gather here to acknowledge.
However, I must say, having received and read through so many tributes from so many people connected to Rob through the school, I have been left with a few rather disturbing images:
- Rob in his yellow and black rugby jersey, let loose in the fresh air, running around on games afternoons, like a contented bumble-bee.
- Rob as a rather marvellous fairy in a pink tutu in the staff Christmas Pantomime.
- Rob doing the conga with groups of students, dancing along the school corridors, bursting in on other lessons whilst singing German carnival songs in strange Cologne dialects.
- Rob in the old staff changing room in Hunt House after rugby, soaking in the large bath tub that used to reside there, like some large naked Friar Tuck.
But to say all of these things, is surely to say nothing more or less than that Rob had a huge heart for the school, a great sense of humour and an unquenchable desire to share his passions with others.
And so let me end these school memories with the words of Peter Watkinson, the man who appointed Robert to his post in Rydal; he says this:
"I don’t suppose back in 1983 that Rob and Birgitta imagined that they would stay so long in North Wales and that Rob would eventually become the longest serving member of the Common Room: what a surprise, what a delight and what a blessing to us all."
School and family; family and school – there really isn’t much difference you know; they are both places where we learn and places where we know we belong. Walking home last night from my boarding duty along Combermere Rd I noticed, as if for the first time, the lights lit up on every floor of Beecholme House, School house as it was known when Rob was master there; lights punctuating the night, keeping the dark at bay; saying, there is a place of welcome, of hearth and of home, a place of shelter from the storm, a house with many rooms, our Father’s house.
And today we hold on to that image. And though we feel so bereft, we find comfort in the promises of Christ, who said to his friends on the eve of his crucifixion:
For Robert, Jesus was the One above all who could be trusted without question. In the words of St Paul he was the One in whom it was not sometimes Yes and sometimes No, but always Yes.
And this day we give thanks to God that in Robert we have seen and heard and felt that same Yes which he has offered to us in a myriad of different ways, at a myriad different moments throughout our lives; and for that reason, hard though it is for us to let him go, we commend him to his heavenly Father in joyful sadness, with great warmth and love and affection, and we are bold to say:
‘Happy are those who die in the Lord!'
Now they can rest forever after their work.
Rev'd Sissons