“We are diminished without Dick, but more, for having known him.” (former colleague)
One-time Director of Sport, Sixth Form Undermaster, Senior Tutor, Surmaster and Acting High Master, Dick was a great servant of the School. He was instrumental in helping to bring about extensive changes, not least of which were the extensive partnership programmes and in the bringing of specialist coaches into all sports set-ups. When Dick left St Paul’s to become Headmaster at Sherfield School, Ali Summers (1978-83), a School Governor at the time, wrote a tribute in The Pauline which you can read below. A full obituary by Terry Peters, a former colleague at St Paul’s School (1988-2013) is also available here: Obituaries – Former Staff.
Warwick’s Hele’s appointment of Dick Jaine in 1979 to the Geography Department and to be Master in Charge of Fencing was a departure for St Paul’s. He was ten years younger than any other member of the Common Room and although St Paul’s had had ex-international rugby and cricket players on the staff, it had never had a training Olympian.
The recruitment process was unorthodox too. In the days before mobile phones, the High Master managed to track Dick to his sister’s house in an exposed and unpopulated part of Wales. It didn’t start well when his sister told him that “some bloke who calls himself ‘The High Master St Paul’ but sounds a bit like your dozy friend Ash” wanted to speak to him. Dick was reluctant to accept an invitation to meet in London as he was off to Manchester shortly and so Hele suggested the more convenient, and famous Pauline-linked, Carlisle. He told him he would book a room although it was only when Dick arrived that he discovered that the interview would be in Hele’s bedroom. Dick was not looking for a job and so the High Master’s parting shot that Dick’s present headmaster was calling in ten minutes and he would have to tell him whether he was coming to St Paul’s was a bit of surprise.
It has to be said St Paul’s was a bit of a departure for Dick too. At Marlborough, where he started his career, he had palatial rooms, a houseman, his clothes ironed weekly and a black Labrador called Penny. In Barnes he shared a flat that had seen better days, his roommate respected no ownership of food, he did his own ironing and Penny had to go. He came not for the School but because his Olympic preparation meant he was training every morning and every evening and travelling to competitions every weekend. St Paul’s with its own Salle and proximity to the Airport was a means to an end.
It was a shrewd move. Within a year he had been selected to represent his Country in Sabre in 1980 at the Moscow Olympics. Cruelly with Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan the UK Government instituted a selective boycott of the Games and amongst those forbidden to go were our fencers. By 1982 he had been selected to represent England in the Brisbane Commonwealth Games where he picked up the Silver and returned triumphant.
From his first day at St Paul’s, he made his mark. The camaraderie of the Fencing Salle had led to a greater familiarity between boys and staff than perhaps elsewhere in the School in the 1970’s. Dick’s predecessor John Hall had always been known as “John” to boys in the Salle even though he was Mr Hall outside. Dick’s arrival was greeted with the same first name familiarity although not for long. Dick suggested that rather than using “Dick”, it would be better for the boys to call him “Bwana”. It was slightly different but much less formal and could be used inside and outside the Salle. The change was adopted immediately with much enthusiasm. In a time before the Internet, it was only years later that we found out that “Bwana” is Swahili for Master or Sir.
From Master in charge of Fencing he moved to Head of PE and then the first Director of Sport. It was then 6th Form Undermaster, Senior Tutor and, after twice stepping in as acting Surmaster, in 2006 he was appointed to the position permanently.
Only if you are a Pauline or a parent (and there were many of them who found the rather dishy Mr Jaine as one of the most attractive features of St Paul’s) do you know that it is the Surmaster who runs the School. This suited him and Martin Stephen, his High Master. He set the highest personal standards and he expected the same from Paulines. Under his stewardship, the School reached the greatest of heights.
His strengths were immaculate planning, attention to detail and an ability to inspire. He helped extend the Tutor system from a once a week meeting to the daily start to the School’s day. He instituted a disciplined and highly successful admissions procedure that enhanced the School’s reputation for fairness and professionalism. At a time when St Paul’s was keen to end its isolation in the Community, it was he who created and rolled out the Partnership programme with local state and maintained Schools. He developed, with Martin, the concept of “Needs Blind” and started building the links that will make it a reality. He recruited years of Colets Fellows, the largely unknown group of bright American graduates who come on an annual basis to contribute to the School and experience a life-changing British year abroad and he created and executed the plan for the continued day to day running of the School around the building of the Science Block.
He stood in as Acting High Master for two terms in 2011 ensuring that the School ran smoothly and without disruption. His success was publicly and privately recognised by a grateful Governing Body.
It was though in organising the School’s Quincentenary Celebrations that he was most in his element. There were no precedents to mark a School’s Five Hundred years and such an enormous anniversary required the right mix of history and relevance. Dick wrote the script. An Old Pauline service to start the year at St Paul’s Cathedral, another one for the whole School to celebrate John Colet Day Service with the Archbishop of Canterbury and finally a Guildhall dinner to finish. In between there were Quincentenary marques, ties, a book and even franking logos on all letters despatched in the year all co-ordinated and approved by him.
There was also a hugely successful visit of the Prince of Wales to the School. He ran the event without a slip or an upset including ensuring the whole School was in the General Teaching Block for the Prince’s arrival but had moved, St Trinian like, to the Sports Hall in time for his speech twenty minutes later. All completed in absolute silence.
The Quincenetenary Concert on “Big Side” was the event that he took the most pride in. Whether it was negotiating with BBC Wales, a satellite link for Rowers in Northampton, booking Katherine Jenkins or Heather Small, deciding on the running order or a triumphal ending with Jerusalem it was Dick’s baby and he loved organising every minute of it. In another life he would have made a great Impresario.
We will miss him on his bike on the fields on a Saturday checking on every team, we will miss him raising our sights to what we should strive for rather than what we can achieve and we will miss his ability to raise our spirits with a kind word.
On the Fencing Salle wall, he sits at the front of every picture between 1979 and 2002 – thirty four in all. No one appears so many times anywhere in the School nor, I suspect, is any ever likely to. A record that that an Olympian should be proud of and a fitting tribute.