IT WAS WITH A sort of stunned incredulity and
instinctive outrage that we heard in December
1976 of the totally unexpected death of
Mike Witherell.
Full School Colours in Rugby and Rowing,
Half School in Athletics, D of E Gold, the
Belmont Tie, Prefect ... he reached all the
conventional heights of schoolboy eminence.
But he was no stodgily respectable establishment
figure — there was the fun side. His Housemaster
cherished ever afterwards a delightful fragment of
Mike's diary that he came across in some end-of-
term clear-up :
Tuesday 26 February 1963 (Shrove Tuesday
Nine weeks. Snow. Pancake Day Got the
boiler to 240° F. Danger point 175° F. Had
coffee, toast, butter, honey and fag.
Wednesday, 27 February, 1963 (Ash Wednesday)-
Snow. Received (sic.) the Ashes. Kept them
on until 12 o'clock. Rugby Meeting in Hereford
'Delightful naivety' Dom Aelred commented in the margin, and he was right. Somehow the whole essence of a Belmont Fifth former is distilled in those brief diary extracts, and the whole essence of the Mike we loved.
Of course, he lives for ever in the annals of Kemble for the memorable day when he was playing in the Senior
House Cup against Vaughan. The score was level, and all hinged on a conversion Mike was about to attempt
Dom Aelred shouted : 'Convert this, and I'll see you get made a Prefect.' He did and he was.
After Belmont, the Army : -I loved it - fantastic.' Then stockbroking - 'deadly'. Then inspiration was sitting in Uncle Sam's in the Fulham Road. The waiter brought me a hamburger, and I thought this looks easy enough, why don't I try it ?' Teaming up with his new wife. Penny, her brother and his wife, he opened -JUMBO'S
BEEFBURGER RESTAURANT' down in Penzance. It all sounded great fun, though very hard work. Haddockburger ... egg foo yongburger . . . bombay duckburger . . . homburger . . . silly burger The menu was typically Mike. Success was just round the corner. Penny had just had a baby, and then out of the blue at
the age of twenty-nine, stricken with a rare heart disease, he was dead.
It was fun knowing him. May he rest in peace.
DCJ
