Personal heroes - 22nd September 2020

MORPETH ROTARY HEROES

At the last Rotary Zoom meeting three speakers described their heroes. Rotary member Nadeem Shah, teacher Peter Curran and Janet, wife of Rotary President Colin Dyson. 

Nadeem Shah grew up in Pakistan where the family had a farm on both sides of a river. It was in the Punjab near the border between India and Pakistan. Punjab means land of the five rivers. His hero is his father who was the youngest of nine children. He was expected to work on the farm but wanted to study and was allowed to learn about electrical engineering. He got a job at the military airport near the farm where he worked for the US Air Force. He was asked to go to Oklahoma to study aviation engineering and got his PhD. He then worked for the US Air Force in the Middle East but his roots were in his ancestral land and culture. The rest of the family lived on the farm in Pakistan where Nadeem was the youngest of seven. As the youngest he was well protected and kept away from risk and harm. He disliked school and wanted to travel. His father said he could come to stay in the Middle East with him and he could give him home schooling. He went for a three months trial and stayed for four years. He got the US equivalent of A Levels and went back to Pakistan for higher education and studied pharmacy. After college he was selected for the civil service, one of the top jobs in Pakistan. Unexpectedly his father challenged him not to stay in Pakistan but to travel and explore the world. He was given the chance of a three month training course at Aberdeen in 1994 and moved to Britain. His father died while still working in the Middle East. Nadeem was always grateful to his father for seeing something in him that needed to be developed. He challenged him out of his comfort zone and into experiences beyond what can be found in books. He has been a lifelong inspiration.

Peter Curran had worked as a teacher with President Colin at a school in Blyth. They had a series of assemblies where the subject was heroes. His own hero was Rosa Parks, a black woman who in 1955 refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man as required by a local law. She was arrested by the police. It led to a black boycott of buses. The houses of two black leaders were bombed, Rosa lost her job and received death threats. She moved from Montgomery to Detroit where she worked for a Congressman. She died in 2005. In the southern states of the US in the 1950s there were extra restrictions based on sex, religion and colour. Many had been enacted in the 1870s shortly after the Civil War. They were known as ‘Jim Crow’ laws to enforce segregation. They put into law social and economic disadvantage for black people saying they were separate but equal but white facilities were always better. In 1954 racial segregation in schools was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court but not enforced for some years. Rosa held up a spotlight to US injustice in the ‘land of the free’. She was an inspiration and a hero and challenges us to ask ourselves ‘Do I act and speak out when I see something that is wrong?’.

Janet Dyson spoke of her great grandma who was an ordinary girl born in 1877. She was brought up in a weaver’s cottage in the Lancashire mill town of Preston. By the time she was 14 the family had a drapers shop, a business selling music and a small photography studio. She was an excellent pianist and violinist and had a very good alto voice. She won an audition for the English National Opera but her father would not let her go to London. She was at school until 12 then got a dressmaking apprenticeship. By 1901 she was a dressmaker in her own right and making dresses for the well-to-do families of the town. At the age of 25 she had her first daughter and attended her first suffrage meeting at Heaton Park in Manchester. She walked 8 miles to Manchester to join Emily Pankhurst’s Women’s Freedom League and hear the speeches. Her dad kept finding jobs for her to do to try keep her out of danger. By then she was the mother of two children and was helping at rallies. Woman of property aged over 30 got the vote in 1918. All women over 21 got the same voting rights as men in 1928. She was strong, ruled the household, was independent, had a love of music and firmly believed that you should always use your vote. After she died they found a faded medal and ribbon in a drawer, it was a mark of her bravery in the cause of women’s suffrage. 

Colin summarised by saying the heroes had shown how important it was to leave fear behind and follow your dreams, to call out and stand against injustice, to keep your independence and to always vote.