Obituaries
While at the College he was in Marlowe, boarded in Ivyholme and was a sergeant in the RAF section of the CCF. After leaving Dulwich, he did National Service in the RAF, which taught him navigation and radar skills and proved very useful in later life. Following a spell at Neuchatel University, he also picked up language skills, before joining his father’s business, which was as a wholesale fruiterer at Borough Market and the original Covent Garden market. He then bought a garage business originally owned by his aunt. After struggling initially, Ian turned it around into a very successful business, which he ran for many years, retiring in 2014. Despite having left the wholesale fruit business years earlier, he remained a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers. He married Tina and together they spent much leisure time racing yachts, especially at Cowes, in France and in Ireland. They also sailed on holidays in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, where the navigation skills learned in the RAF were useful for locating hard-to-find islands like the Maldives. They also sailed in Europe in the Mediterranean, and across the Pacific in a 55 foot boat. Eventually they sailed a 48 foot boat across the Atlantic to Bequia, one of the Grenadine islands in the Caribbean, where by 1999 they owned land and were building a house. They spent ten happy years cruising around the Caribbean, with Ian managing to run his garage business in the UK as well. With the boat remaining in the Caribbean, Ian moved on to classic cars when back in the UK. He ended up buying three vintage Bentleys, which he restored and took to many car rallies, winning numerous prizes in Concours d’Elegance. He drove the cars on holiday trips to Europe, and three times they took one of the cars across the Atlantic for month-long tours in America. In the winter of 2014-15 they went back to Bequia for a holiday, but Ian, who had undergone major heart surgery in the late 1990s, suddenly collapsed in the middle of dinner in a restaurant, dying immediately from a massive heart attack. After a week waiting for the paperwork to be sorted out, Ian’s body was flown home for a packed funeral service in Hampshire, full of mourners in classic cars, sailing friends, business contacts, as well as local people. He is missed by everyone who knew him, but especially by his wife, Tina, who contributed significantly to this obituary. Ian’s biggest regret would be that he never got to drive the Austin Healey 3000, which he had just finished restoring.
an Australian citizen, he was especially proud of his English heritage and his time at Dulwich. After leaving the College he went to Hatfield College of Technology, where he gained a National Certificate in Engineering, before moving on to the Philippa Fawcett Teacher Training College in Streatham. Once in Australia, he tried several career paths before eventually settling on teaching, gaining a Diploma of Education at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia (WA). He taught at St Stephen’s School in Duncraig and Kolbe College in Rockingham, both near Perth, WA, for nearly 20 years. In addition to teaching Mathematics and IT, he was also a housemaster for Loyola house at Kolbe College, and unit leader for the Bush Rangers. At the school camps he was always the Camp Leader and he seemed to have an endless knowledge of camp games to engage the students. A natural joker, he could pun, rhyme and limerick to the highest levels and had a suitable joke for every situation. He wrote and produced the annual school pantomime at both schools, which had to have several performances each year to satisfy demand for tickets. Both colleagues and students thought highly of him. Ali looked forward to retirement and planned to travel with his partner in the Western Australian outback, an area close to their hearts. He enjoyed the company of his sons, grandchildren and friends, and wanted to see more of them in retirement. Sadly, heart failure and cancer put an end to those dreams, and Ali is buried at Pinnaroo Memorial Park, north of Perth, and is very much missed by family and friends. He is survived by three sons from his previous marriage, his grandchildren and his partner of more than 20 years, Ann, who contributed significantly to this obituary.
Sheila Bush (née Hodges) 01.07.1914 – 06.10.2015
Sheila Bush, a great friend to Dulwich College, died in Ottawa, Canada, at a sybilline age of 101. In 1981 she published, as Sheila Hodges, God’s Gift, a history of the College, commissioned by David Emms, Master of the College at the time. Her fresh
and lively book, with telling anecdotes and quotations, traced the College’s history: romantic in its origins, only to sink into two disenchanting centuries of charitable sinecure, but suddenly rising up after the reforms of 1857 as an enduring educational and social pioneer. The sub-title of the book was ‘a living history’, and with her special interest in the College’s recovery after the war and the Dulwich Experiment, she interviewed a great many OAs; to understand the contemporary school, as she wrote, she ‘pitched her tent within the school walls’, sitting in on classes as well as masters’ and prefects’ meetings. Long after publishing God’s Gift, although busy with her own writing, she continued to edit the Friends of Dulwich College’s newsletter.
Alistair Wilson Buckner (1960-67) 04.10.1948 – 13.03.2015
Ali Buckner was born in Streatham and came to the College with a free place from Streatham Modern School, and was in Grenville. Although he emigrated to Australia with his family in 1984 and became
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