In Memory of Averil Cawthera
A wonderful Tribute from her Family
How do we write about our Mum? She was such a very special, vibrant person who achieved so much in so many fields. She was a true Yorkshire lass born and bred. Failure was never a word in Mum’s vocabulary her view was if you worked harder you’d get there. We would love to have talked to you about her but knew neither of us would be able to now and so have asked Oseias to do this for us. Mum was born on 24th April, 1933 the longed for 2nd child of Nellie and Maurice Sutcliffe and sister for older brother Edgar. It was obvious early on that Mum was extremely bright - an excellent mathematician and musician. She was also a little spoilt as she soon learnt how to play on her strengths and, being the only girl surrounded by older male cousins and her brother, suited her down to the ground. She won a scholarship to Bradford Girls Grammar School and excelled both academically and musically. Certainly in her teens and early twenties she was well known in the area as a both a Soprano and pianist. In fact it was not until years later that I realised just how good she was. I thought every pianist was able to play perfectly the first time they saw the music and change key automatically if needed, to say nothing of being able to play any tune sung to them just from ear, it came as rather a surprise to find that other good pianists couldn’t do this and laughed and said, if only! Not wanting to go too far away from home she trained to teach at Bretton Hall and started her teaching career in Bradford. In 1957 she married Dad. Throughout their lives they had strong ties with the Methodist Church. Both being born, baptised and later confirmed as a members and they were married at Annesley, Bradford. Wherever we lived Mum & Dad always found fellowship with the local Methodists. When Wesley Place was due to be demolished we can remember our parents helping to raise funds and being very much a part of the planning of the new Church, Aldersgate. Again on Sheppey, Mum was happy to play for services and get involved with the youth section of the Church. The tiny chapel at Houghton-le-Side near Darlington probably didn’t know what had hit it when Mum and Dad arrived as it was the biggest increase in congregation for years but again our parents threw themselves whole heartedly into stewardship and lay preaching. When they moved to Telford Mum and Dad joined Admaston and embraced this lively family church wholeheartedly. Latterly Mum attended Stonehouse and even though her arthritis was getting worse, stopping her playing the piano, she joined tea rotas and also the taxi service for those not able to drive and took Sean and me along to harvest suppers etc whenever she could talk us into it. In the days before renovating became popular, they bought Prospect House, an almost derelict Yorkshire stone farmhouse, and set about turning it into a home. It is a home Don & I both remember well, you really could play hide and seek in it, to say nothing of slide down the banisters! Although thanks to Mum & Dad’s ability to find and fall in love with the unusual it was only the first of the lovely houses they provided as homes for us. Next was a cliff top bungalow where you could walk from the garden down to the sea, then an Art Deco pile with again room to spare for energetic teenagers and their friends both inside and out. Next, the zaniest of them all, the circular monster that was Lireva, with views to the North York moors and even a pool which looked good even though it was never warm enough to use. In many ways Mum was a trail blazer for the modern working mum. She managed to balance work and family pretty well, paying for the cleaning etc to be done to make time to spend with us. She was ambitious too and quickly became Head of Music at Buttershaw Secondary School throwing herself both into her music teaching and also music extra curricular. It was here that she first started the musical productions with her pupils and staff that were to continue throughout her professional career. Learning should be fun and not just based in the classroom according to her. She took further promotion to become Tutor to Women Students at Bradford Technology College but moved back into secondary education for the first of her Deputy Headships prior to moving to the Sheppey School in Kent, at the time one of the largest comprehensives in the country.By now she was in the then almost totally male world of secondary senior leadership, she would have felt at home.In fact far from conforming to any stereotype of school mistress she dressed colourfully (we both cringed at times) wore high heels and took the odd dog to work with her. We both remember a certain bright green suit with huge faux fur collar being leant for use in a pantomime production when a sixth form lad ‘starred’ as Mum, complete with borrowed dog – she never minded having fun poked at her.In fact she enjoyed pushing the boundaries and it didn’t hamper further promotion to First Deputy and then the Headship for a short while at Sheppey before returning up north to take up her own Headship of the mixed comprehensive Sarah Metcalfe School in Middlesborough, a school she loved greatly.Here she was able to build around her a team of like minds and enthuse her staff, parents and pupils to make a difference and use education to do so.Many of the pupils came from extremely deprived backgrounds and for them she wanted school to be a way forward, a haven, a place that cared and a place for both work and play.The school’s achievement was recognised by a visit from the HRH Prince of Wales.Mum’s aim on that day: to get him to meet as many of her kids as possible!
A bit by accident she became involved with German Spitz at the beginnings of the breed in this country. This was totally her breed and she handled many of them herself, and even groomed a few. She thoroughly enjoyed showing and breeding them and, although she never made a big thing of it, was influential in setting the course for the breed in those early days. Many of today’s winning Kleins go back to Lireva bloodlines and she also bred one of the first Champions in the breed. She was honoured to be the first judge of the breed when they were first classified at Crufts, she was later further honoured with an extremely rare second invitation to judge them this time with CCs at Crufts. She served for many years on the Samoyed Association Executive committee and up till the end of 2007 was the secretary of the Pomeranian Club, serving in this capacity for approaching 24 years. She took this role on with her usual professionalism and determination to set high standards. She felt it important to know all the membership by name, just as she liked to know all the pupils names in school. That she was able to do it, in both cases, as well was quite a feat. She viewed herself as a servant to the committee with the job of holding the Mother Club of the breed on a straight and honourable course and woe betide any who dared to threaten this. As she could, when necessary, bring the strength of character that had been tempered like steel in the early days of her professional career, to bear in this role too. Most in the breed though will remember her genuine interest in them and their dogs, her easy smile and willingness to help. Mum was over the moon when she became a Gran, she reckoned she’d been kept waiting far too long but Don & Bev came through in the end with Ellie and Fin. She gave up on me totally in the end! Again conventional granny she wasn’t. She never had the first idea what to buy for Christmas and birthdays and merrily got it wrong time after time, never bothering her in the slightest. Again her ability to think outside the box got her there in the end. Having spent all her and our childhood holidays traipsing around the British Isles with Dad, (up and down mountains round costal paths, down pot holes – you name it we did it and all in the glorious British weather!), she suddenly got the urge to see more of the rest of the world. She started with a few jaunts to the Med with Dad and other friends but in true Mum style wanted to spread her wings further and came up with her grand plan: If you take your family on your dream holidays with you, paying for them of course (a.) you get to go - and where you want to as well (b.) you get to spend quality time with them and (c.) they have memories to last them a lifetime, made possible by you. Being Mum the world became her oyster and so off we all went sometimes together other times in 2 halves (she got twice as many holidays that way, not daft our Mum) The travel companies loved her: Florida, the Keys as well as Disney World, Mexico, Egypt, The Canaries, South Africa, Israel and Kenya to name but a few. She was right those memories will stay with us and she was a central part of them. We think it says it all that those kids of yours at Sarah’s called you Marm but it always sounded like Mam, - that’s how a lot of them thought of you anyway. Pom folk and those who came to know you in the wider dog world have been calling you ‘Mummy Averil’ for years and again that is how many of them thought of you and of course, you’ve always been Mum to us.
Mum’s abilities were also recognised amongst Cleveland County Headteachers whom she represented for some years at the Secondary Headteachers Association.She used to joke about the fact that County sent her out regularly to national meetings to show they were ‘go ahead’ in appointing women secondary heads, we think she was their only one at the time.She also laughed when various groups asked her to speak about positive discrimination for women – her view was that if you were good enough and had the determination to succeed you would, what did being female have to do with it?In fact she was rarely called the Head, most referred to her as the Boss. At her leaving do she was determined to go out in style and I can well remember her searching out a ridiculous bright red polka dot dress with low neck and net petticoat, worn with red high heels only Mum would have dared to wear it but she looked a million dollars! When Sarah’s closed we know Mum was lost for a while, still wanting challenges but not knowing what or where to find them. For a short time she went back to the classroom teaching her first love Music again, but it wasn’t enough. Seeing the chalk face so closely again did give her the way forward though. She became a consultant to the Quality and Curriculum Authority's Ofsted Inspectoratefor Music until retiring, using inspection in a positive way, to support the next generation of music teachers in improving the way they worked with their pupils. During this time and into retirement she was also Chair of Governors at a local Special School, proud to give of her expertise in this way too.Professionally in education she always took the front seat and was hugely respected in her field. In the other extremely important facet of her life, our hobby of showing and breeding Samoyeds and Pomeranians, she was happy taking more of a back seat when it came to the owning and showing. In the early days she would laughingly say, “I sign the cheques and do the driving” – in reality that was never quite the case. Mum’s idea of a back seat still involved her totally in all Lireva has ever done and achieved, it just got her out of the grooming and trimming and eventually the driving as well! Mum and Dad founded the Lireva Samoyeds in the very early 70s having bought Zabodak, their first Sam in the late 60s. They only bred a litter to keep a puppy and so the number of Sammies bred was relatively small, as again was the number of dogs they kept. Even so over the years the Lireva affix has bred or owned and campaigned, 7 Champions in this breed to over 30 Challenge Certificates. The Poms were supposed to be young Averil’s but were always our 2nd family breed really and they have been the main breed for some time now, accumulating over 160 Challenge Certificates on the way to making up 16 Champions. In terms of pride in her breeding, this place will always be held by Ziggy, Ch Lireva’s Shooting Star, who counts as one of the Pomeranian Greats with among his many top wins Reserve Best in Show at Crufts in 1984, a moment we know meant a tremendous amount to Mum.