Golf club stalwart and former head Elfed dies at 98

Elfed Thomas, who has died aged 98, was also a passionate golfer and long time stalwart of Bridgnorth Golf Club, of which he was president for many years.

"We often told him to write a book because of the stories he could tell. His life covered such a fantastic period of change," said son Stephen Thomas.

As part of the post-war allied occupation forces in Japan, Elfed – known as "Elv" to many – tried along with an Australian sergeant to introduce cricket to that country.

"They were overwhelmed by the Americans, who pumped money into baseball."

Elfed is survived by sons Stephen, who is a Crown Court judge who sits at Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton, and Mark, who ran a glass business in Spain and is now retired, as well as four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

He lost his wife Eirlys in 2018 and afterwards moved from Bridgnorth to live with Stephen near Newport.

Elfed hailed originally from Maesteg, South Wales, and was a fluent Welsh speaker. Like his older brother David, who was known as Ness, he was a great sportsman, excelling at rugby and cricket, and followed his brother in being captain of the Maesteg school rugby team. He had a trial for the Welsh under-18s side but unfortunately broke his collar bone.

"He did play against Richard Burton, whom he knew as a rugby player. He always said 'he didn't like me, you know.'"

On leaving school he went to teacher training college. But the war was now on and Ness, serving in the RAF, was killed in a Halifax bomber in a training accident in Northern Ireland, a tragedy which had a profound effect on the family and resulted in his parents dissuading Elfed from joining the RAF.

Instead he joined the Royal Navy but quickly realised it was not for him and transferred to the Royal Welch Fusiliers, serving in the Second Battalion, and being sent to India and Burma and then, after the Japanese surrender, to Japan, with the acting rank of Captain.

"They were based on Honshu and he became one of the first soldiers into Hiroshima. He said in a written account that he rescued two saki dishes from the dust. We used to have them, but we never realised their significance and got rid of them. We did not realise they were probably radioactive.

"This may sound callous to the modern ear but he did not have a lot of sympathy for what had happened because he realised that he and his battalion would have been part of the invasion force of Japan and they were all too conscious of the losses that would have been suffered. He said that if the Americans had not dropped the atomic bomb we, the family, would not have been here now. He did not give much for his chances."

However, Stephen added: "There's a twist to this. I would never have said he had been traumatised by the war but in the last few months before he died he began to exhibit signs that he had been traumatised. It had obviously been buried inside him.

"We are talking about nightmares and comments. I think he was a bit concerned that he had witnessed something, certainly in Hiroshima, that he had dismissed as something of which the Japanese were deserving and was perhaps beginning to reflect that it was a terrible thing that had happened."

Returning from Japan in 1947, he resumed teacher training, during which he met Eirlys Davies of Llanelli, whom he wed in 1949.

His teaching career began in Guildford, but then he moved to Shrewsbury, teaching at Monkmoor Boys' Secondary Modern School and being involved in Shrewsbury life, playing both cricket and rugby for the town, being principal of Monkmoor Evening Institute, and being the first leader of the Shrewsbury Young Farmers Club which he helped to form.

He also taught prisoners at Shrewsbury jail and happened to be there giving a night class on the eve of an execution.

"He said it was the strangest atmosphere in the prison that he had ever experienced, a sense of quiet, almost sullen. He exchanged words, small talk, with the hangman – he didn't know he was the hangman at the time."

Next appointment was as first deputy head of Bridgnorth Secondary Modern School as it opened at Oldbury Wells in January 1958. Once more he became involved in the local sporting scene, playing cricket for the town and taking up golf, at which he was to excel, playing off a handicap of four and becoming a stalwart of the town's golf club. He served over the years as captain, trustee, secretary and finally president, before retiring aged 94.

"As trustee he put his own money behind the building of the clubhouse, guaranteeing the loan, which I'm not sure he ever told my mother about."

After his spell at Oldbury Wells a headship at the young age of 35 followed at Holly Hall School, Dudley, a secondary modern school at that time, and he guided the school as it moved to a new site. During his time there he was particularly proud of two achievements which unlocked opportunities for the pupils. One was the introduction of a sporting qualification into the curriculum.

"Also, children who went to secondary moderns were not allowed to do O levels. Dad felt that was particularly unfair to his brighter students and fought the education authority on the issue, but the director of education would not pay for it. So dad paid for the exams himself to give the children the opportunity to achieve O level success. It was one of the first schools in the country, and certainly in and around the West Midlands, where a secondary modern school had put children forward to sit O levels."

As a result some of his pupils landed jobs which had previously been the preserve of those educated at grammar school.

This would have been in the 1960s, the school later becoming a comprehensive. Elfed was head for 25 years until his retirement in 1983.

In retirement, golf continued to be a great love, and was president of Bridgnorth Golf Club from 1990 until 2019, and only stopped playing in his early 90s. He was still vice president at the time of his death.

Stephen said: "He was a true old-fashioned gentleman, but one who moved with the times. He was still using his iPad, which he had mastered, up until a few weeks before his death.

"He was a very gentle man, a courteous man, and I never heard him swear and I rarely or never saw him lose his temper.

"Everybody who knew him liked him – apart from Richard Burton."