William Hunter
Last updated 05:19, Friday, 09 May 2008
He was a big, strong man but William Hunter was a gentle giant with a great sense of humour and he loved children.
As a school caretaker in Carlisle for many years he worked for children and as a ‘lollipop man’ he cared for them. He helped them with his youth club work and with sport, particularly football.
He had made many friends of all ages during his 86 years.
His family came from Dalbeattie but he was born in Carlisle and educated at St Patrick’s School, leaving when he was 14 to work as a delivery boy for a local chemist. He then worked as a labourer before serving in the Royal Artillery during World War Two and one incident during this time showed just how physically ‘hard’ he was. During an exercise at Chesil Bank, in Dorset, an accident with a gun saw one of his fingers blown off. Soldier Hunter didn’t faint or cry out in agony, he simply walked around to see if he could find the missing digit.
He was offered compensation for his injury, either a £68 lump sum or a pension – and he chose the lump sum.
After the war he came home and worked for Miller’s the builders until 1959 when he joined the staff at St Cuthbert’s School as caretaker. There, along with headmaster John Lett and the Co-op electrical boss, Gerry Nugent, he helped renovate an old house in Warwick Square to create premises for the Knights’ Club, which ran successfully for many years.
He also helped run the Edward Street Youth Club and he was a particular favourite with the football team there. At half-time during games, other teams had slices of orange handed round but he broke with tradition and gave the players Woodbine cigarettes instead.
For he was a man who never took anything outside work seriously, including himself.
In the early 1970s he became caretaker at the Belle Vue School and he stayed there until he retired.
He was the crossing patrol man at both St Cuthbert’s and Belle Vue and he was well known for putting his ‘lollipop’ stick to good use by shovelling snow with it during the winters.
He was one of the founder members of a most unlikely sporting group – the Stenhousemuir Supporters Club in Carlisle. He and his friends looked around to see which football team appeared to be the worst in Britain and they decided that Stenhousemuir, near Falkirk, needed all the help it could get.
They even went to see the team play – once – and were given a honorary ceilidh where he told everyone that he had fallen and broken his leg. No-one would believe him and they all returned to Carlisle, where he walked up Brookside to his home in Green Lane, collapsed and had to crawl up the stairs. Only then was he taken to hospital where it was discovered that he really had broken his leg.
A sporting man, in every sense, he was a great fan of Carlisle United.
He was a member of the congregation at St Edmund’s Church and there he helped to keep the premises clean and tidy.
In 1949 he married Madge Lamb, who was a weaver at Holme Head for most of her working life. She died in 2004.
When he eventually had to move into a retirement home he was quite determined that it should be a certain one – because there was a pub just across the road. Mr Hunter had been known to take the odd drink or two.
His funeral took place at Carlisle Crematorium, with Ken Patton making the arrangements.
