Hardy Henry Harrison

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Biografie:
Henry Harrison Hardy (1882 – 1958)
The late H. H. Hardy, whose death on December 24 last evoked a number of tributes to his memory in The Times, was a distinguished representative of the schoolmastering profession that has given so many notable members to the Alpine Club.
He was born on January 2, 1882, and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford, and rapidly established a reputation as a classical scholar. He was assistant master at Rugby from 1905-14 and spent the next five years in the Army. He had served in the 2nd Volunteer Bn. of the Warwickshire Regt. before 1914 and on the outbreak of war was appointed a Captain in the Rifle Brigade. From 1917 to 1919 he was on the General Staff of Fifth Army.
He was appointed Headmaster of Cheltenham in 1919, leaving in 1932 to take over Shrewsbury. But it may fairly be said that his heart was given to Rugby. He became President of the Old Rugbeians in 1946, having been their Secretary many years earlier, and having written (in 1911) a History of Rugby School. He proved to be a most successful and forceful headmaster at both Cheltenham and Shrewsbury, and took an active part in the work of the Headmasters' Conference, being President from 1936-8.
He retired from Shrewsbury in I944, but had already been working on various Government Committees, and in 1946, on the amalgamation of Woolwich and Sandhurst, was appointed the first Director of Studies at the R.M.A., retiring in 1948.
He was a man of many interests, to all of· which he brought great energy and enthusiasm, and through these stimulated others. Music in particular was a lifelong inspiration to him.
A great lover of the countryside, it was but natural that mountaineering should engage him; his list of Alpine ascents opened in 1909 and closed in 1948. He was one of a party of four who, from Oxford days, hill-walked or climbed together for something like forty years. He was elected to the Alpine Club in 1928, and in A.J. 56, pp. 99 seqq., he recorded some of his expeditions in an article entitled ' Humble Pie '. He had no outstanding climbs to his name ; he tended to move about from one district to another while on holiday and it is not possible to say that he had any one special favourite centre. He had ascended a good many of the standard big mountains in the Valais and Oberland; in 1912 he visited Greece, in 1931 the Pyrenees, and in 1938 Norway. He had a particular fondness for the Ötztal and the Lötschental region, and fittingly, in 1948, spent his farewell visit to the Alps in those localities.
When he went to Shrewsbury, he set out to encourage in the boys a love of the countryside, of hill-walking, and of more serious climbing, by instituting a whole holiday each spring (later another was added in the autumn), when not only expeditions to Snowdonia and other attractive neighbouring country areas were made possible, but boys were actually forbidden to stay on the school site. A group, still active, known rather inexactly as ' The Rovers ', was formed, who learned to camp out in the snow as well as in less hardy conditions, and to climb as well as to walk hills. It was on such occasions that Charles Evans, as a boy, had his first experience of climbing.
J. B. Oldham
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 64. Nr. 298, 1959, Seite 101-102


Geboren am:
02.01.1882
Gestorben am:
24.12.1958