NEIL MCKERROW

This OS Weekend Neil McKerrow concluded his two year tenure as President of the Club. For me personally as Chairman he has been a great personal friend and invaluable support. I can think of no better way of expressing my thanks than to include here the words I said in Powell Hall at the OS Dinner:

“As for Neil the Club has been blessed with a most energetic and conscientious President for the last two years. Neil is a man who has served the School and the Club in a number of different ways over the years, all successfully. But I feel it will be his Presidency and his outstanding work on the Pilgrimage for which he will be most remembered.

After the armistice of the First World War we, as a nation, made a commitment to honour and remember those that perished. The Pilgrimage has been our way of keeping that promise. It is a tribute to the fallen of Sedbergh School, which manifests itself through our website with all the biographies that Neil has edited and with such magnificent and dignified prose, through the tour to Mons and Ypres which he chiefly organised, and in such other ways which have all contributed to a collective pride that we all share in the Pilgrimage. Add to this his research on St George’s Chapel in Ypres which has meant that by his hand we have been given one of the last three places for a commemorative plaque, just in time as I understand there is now no more room. The Pilgrimage will be an enduring legacy, created by Neil, and will stand for evermore in testament to the fallen of Sedbergh but also to the work that Neil has undertaken as President at this historic time. Neil, if these chaps could, I am sure they would rise up, make their way up the steps of the Cloisters and finding themselves in Powell Hall, shake you warmly by the hand.”

Jan van der Velde
Chairman,
OS Club