Don Blackhurst

Former editor of The Independent Chris Blackhurst takes a look back at the life of his father Don who died in September 2021 at the age of 90.

"IMAGINE the shock. In 1974, aged 14, I came down the stairs in my parents’ home in Hawcoat, in Barrow, to find the new England football captain standing in the kitchen.

Emlyn Hughes came to thank Donald Blackhurst, my father, as one of those who taught him to play football.

Don, as he was known, died last week, aged 90 after a lifetime of service to Barrow and its community. Variously, he was a schoolteacher, leader of the army cadets, town councillor, union boss, chair of school governors at Dane Ghyll, governor at Alfred Barrow, and Lake District warden.

After attending Barrow Grammar, he ran away to join the army. He was sent to the Emergency in Malaya. Seeing another side of the world reinforced his love of geography. It was the subject he taught, along with PE, for decades in Barrow secondary schools, mainly at Risedale, but also at Holker Street and Thorncliffe.

He believed passionately in children getting the best start in life, in being able to seize every opportunity. At Thorncliffe, he oversaw careers and in a first for Barrow, created a work experience programme, giving pupils the chance to see for themselves and inform their choice of career.

He served on Barrow council for many years as a Conservative. He admired Margaret Thatcher for her strength and determination but at heart he was a determinedly One Nation Tory, closer to the likes of Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine. He praised Heseltine for making the effort to understand the deprivation caused by the collapse of manufacturing industry and heavy engineering in the North and instigating new developments.

Don was a Tory but he chaired the local branch of the National Union of Teachers. Similarly, his favourite councillor was not a fellow Conservative but Labour’s Nan Tait.

He set high personal standards and was disappointed when they were not met by others. He became a Lake District voluntary warden, going out in all weathers repairing footpaths and tidying up, to places like High Dam and Stanley Ghyll, because, while driving in the Laskes, the people in the car in front threw litter out of the window.

Above all, he was a family man – married for 60 years to his late wife, Rose, father to me and Jane, grandfather and great-grandfather.

For more than a decade he suffered from asbestosis, the result of doing casual work when young in the shipyard one summer to make money or from spending years in crumbling classrooms and gyms. That, plus his heartbreak at losing Rose, reduced him considerably.

In typical fashion, he soldiered on, defiant and refusing to be cowed, still driving to the Coast Road every day, to a favourite spot she and he used to share".

Courtesy of 'The Mail' and Chris Blackhurst.