Jim Randell was the President of the Club from 1994-95. Jim along with his late wife, Sheila, supported the club for many years and seldom (if ever) missed an event or committee meeting.
This is the eulogy that Dave Randell delivered at Jim’s funeral.
James Henry Randell, or as he liked to be known, Jim, was born on the 8th December 1925 in Southall in west London. When he was 5, he moved up to Edinburgh with his mother and father, as his father had a new job in the city’s Education Department. Jim went to the junior and senior departments of the Royal High School in Edinburgh, and when he was 16, was given a pushbike. Apparently this was Sheila, my mum’s, first memory of him! His thirst for adventure must have started at this time, because he toured, certainly the Borders, but I think the whole of Scotland on his bike, if I remember correctly.
He had been in the Air Training Corps at the Royal High senior school, so when he joined up two years later, he joined the R.A.F. Unfortunately , he couldn’t become a pilot because his eyesight wasn’t good enough. “You can be a navigator” they said, “No thanks, if I cant fly the plane, I don’t want to know!” So he went off to join the army. As he went to sign up, he saw a poster for British officers being needed in the Indian army, so he went out to India, and also spent time with the Gurkhas.
When he returned to Scotland, he was given the choice of looking after boats in Rosyth dockyard, or transport in Perth. He took the transport job because that included the use of Staff cars, which would impress girls!!…. his words, not mine!!
He left the forces and met up again with Sheila and her friend Betty, who had both written to him while he was in India. He was now able to start training to be an Architect, which was what he’d decided to be years before, and so started 7 years at The Edinburgh College Of Art, in his words “learning to draw a straight line freehand”.
During the next few years he found time to take Sheila to London, Paris, Venice, Rome, Florence and Capri, and on the 8th July 1950 they married in Edinburgh. So, yes it would have been their 60th anniversary this year, and dad already had it written in his diary. They bought a flat in Bath Street, in Edinburgh, and lived there for 3 or 4 years spending the summers hitch hiking round Europe.
Jim graduated in 1953 gaining a Diploma in Architecture. He became an Associate of The Royal Institute of British Architects on the 15th June 1954, having started his first job as an Architectural assistant in Edinburgh. Two more local jobs followed, and Jim became an Associate of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland on the 27th June 1956. However, by this time work had disappeared in Scotland and so Jim moved to London to find work. Money was scarce and he always maintained that he lived solely on spaghetti to start with!
Another great event in 1956, was that on the 3rd October I was born, and mum and I moved down to be with him in London, first in a flat, and then in our own caravan in Loughton by the side of Epping Forest. By this time he was working for Tripe and Wakeham, a firm of Chartered Architects. They decided to open an office in Aden a barren rock in south Yemen, and Jim went out to run it .Mum and I followed and we were there for 3 years.
Jim and Sheila loved the lifestyle, entertaining or being entertained, and the fact that the Governor would frequently be a guest with his radio truck and armed escort, secretly tickled Jim! In fact he told a story of going to a dinner party at the governors, mum and dad were a little late which was not done, and so he put the car headlights on full beam and drove down the wrong side of the short dual carriageway into town to get there quicker! He maintained that their Mercedes was the biggest car in Aden, apart from the governor’s, and everyone got out of the way!
When we left Aden, we went round a lot of Game parks in East Africa on the way home. We sailed through the Suez canal so Sheila could experience it, and across the Mediterranean sea to Marseilles. When we got back to the UK, we lived in Teddington, and Jim was headhunted by W S Atkins & Partners in Epsom, Surrey to be Senior Architect.
It was while working here that one of Jim’s new colleagues told him about the house in Horsham that he had just bought, which had a huge garage. This was exactly what we needed at the time having brought the Mercedes home from Aden, and so we started our long association with Horsham.
After spending 3 to 4 years settling into our new house, Jim was off again, and was sent to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to run an office out there for a year. Mum and I joined him, and whilst we were there we all toured the country. We went to the Tissisat falls, Lake Tana the source of the Nile, Gondar, Axum, and to the pilgrimage for St. Gabriel at Kolubi with over one hundred thousand Ethiopians and us circling the church at dawn. The Ethiopian culture and people had a profound effect on Jim, and when we came home he joined the Anglo Ethiopian society, becoming Secretary, Chairman, and finally, President. He left the society some time ago, but has kept up with his friends from the Society, and his friends from Addis, many of whom are here today.
As most of you will know, Jim’s handwriting was dreadful. And in a letter home to us from Ethiopia, he proudly stated that he had joined the tootsie wootsie club! Well! It turned out that he’d in fact joined the toastmasters club, which relieved mum somewhat!
When we came home from Ethiopia, Jim joined Costain Construction as a Senior Architect, working from an office in south Wimbledon. He left this company due to redundancy, caused by a fall in building demand and set up his own Architectural Practice. Sheila looked after the accounts, did some of the typing, and made a lot of coffee! It was about this time that Jim took mum to India, somewhere she’d wanted to go for 40 years. He delighted in showing her the sights; the Taj Mahal, Delhi, and Jai Pur. He also took her up to the Shetlands, to stay with friends, where they watched the burning of a Viking long boat and saw a white hare in the car headlights, which apparently is a very rare sight .I think however, that he missed the hurly burly of a formal office, and went to Damon Lock Grabowski, in London, as what was really a part time Consultant helping younger architects with their work and careers.
He’d always had an ambition to retire at 80 and achieved this at the end of 2005, beginning of 2006. He used this retirement time to go to Life drawing evening classes, and carry on his extensive social life in London with my mum. They went to Ethiopian restaurants, attended Ethiopian Embassy functions,, Scottish Schools’ dinners, and many social functions with the National Liberal club, of which he was also a member.
He also continued with his almost lifelong research of our Family Tree, having unearthed relatives in far flung locations.
Jim was a well read and very intelligent man, asking for Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, to “dip in and out of” during his latest stay in hospital! He also had a lifelong love of art, both drawing and painting his own pictures, and reading books and articles commenting on and criticising famous and not so famous paintings. Another lifelong interest was photography, for which he had all the up to date gadgets and different lenses, and I remember him developing his own pictures at home. He was very proud of both his Granddaughters, having reviews of some of Heather’s amateur dramatic productions in his office and being interested in her travels to Spain, America and Thailand. Elizabeth shared his great love of art and had many discussions with him about the subject. Another subject that Elizabeth and her Granfer, as grandfathers are known in the Randell family, talked about was Philosophy, something that he was pleased that Elizabeth is taking at Hull University. He has many books on the subject…..big heavy ones!
Dad was a very kind, fair generous man; always ready with advice if it was asked for, whether on how to tackle a DIY problem, the best way to invest money, or the quickest way to Edinburgh or Bristol by road. I have described him as a true gentleman to a couple of people over the past few weeks, and Sue and I have had many kind letters and cards with more thoughts about him. Here are a few:-Jim was a special friend and aspiring work colleague. Many others too remain ever grateful that he patiently passed on to them his experience and skills. And though they have since gone various ways, it was always Jim they asked after, when later in life you met up with them. An era has passed. …I will always have very fond memories of Jim, who was one of the nicest people I have ever had the privilege to meet…..Jim could always be relied upon to be unpredictable and had something to teach us all about professionalism, but just as importantly about how to enjoy work and life.
About twelve years ago, Jim had a quadruple heart by-pass, which certainly gave him a new lease of life, however his heart was still weak, and he had a Pacemaker/ defibrulator fitted 2-3 years ago, after a collapse in Victoria station. A year or so ago, he started caring more for mum and this put more strain on his heart. She sadly died in January, and Jim’s heart condition worsened. In fact he was in hospital on the day of Sheila’s funeral, as some of you will remember, and was allowed out for the day, under strict instructions. He missed Mum very much and his heart got considerably worse after her death. He was admitted to St. Thomas’s hospital in London after a slight collapse during an outpatients appointment. For the next 17 – 18 days, he kept being told that he could go home in a few days, but kept having blackouts, so never got to that stage.
He had complete control over his mental faculties right up to the end. In fact, he’d not only been sketching one of the wards a few days before, but in the Intensive Care unit, he told me that it would have been a far better use of space, if the air conditioning duct and the electrical duct had been put in the other way round!!
And so, as he said at Mum’s funeral, here we are.
We’re all going to miss him dreadfully, and I think I speak for all of you when I say, Jim it’s been a privilege to know you, and I speak for myself, when I say Dad, its an honour to be your son!!