Harry Aubin
Harry Aubin:
popular teacher
The Aubin family shop. Harry is included in the picture with his parents
This obituary by Colin Ireson was first published in the St Saviour parish magazine La Cloche in 2020
I am very pleased to attach a tribute to Harry Aubin, as he was known to us at school, one of my teachers at Hautlieu in the 1960s.
He lived in Maufant for some 30 years, earlier living opposite Victoria Cottage Homes for about ten years, and when I learnt of his death through a friend, but then discovered his fascinating and quite surprising background, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass to let La Cloche readers know as well.
Family
An author, retired teacher and much-appreciated Jersey Heritage Site Guide, Harold Edward Aubin was born in Roseville Street, St Helier, on 13 January 1929. His father, also Harold Edward Aubin, was from a Jersey family of very long standing; his mother Clarice Juliette Florence Le Moigne was born in Jersey, her parents having moved to Jersey from the adjacent coast of Normandy.
When Harry was a child, his parents ran a shop and dairy in St Saviour’s Road, opposite the junction with Pleasant Street - the shop still exists today. While his mother ran the shop, his father would run the dairy and deliver milk, in those times twice daily. Harry recalled being strapped in a cardboard box tied to the sidecar of a Royal Enfield motorcycle which was used for delivering milk in the early days – no mention of a helmet.
As a child Harry also enjoyed spending much time with his maternal grandparents at their farm near Samares. His son Nick states that the event which perhaps had the most impact on Harry’s life was the Occupation. At the outset the family tried to keep their distance from the occupying forces, but this was difficult, the shop and dairy were close to the Continental Hotel which the Germans took over as a Soldatenheim, where off-duty soldiers would meet and relax.
One morning, without any prior warning, Harry’s parents found labourers constructing bicycle racks in their back yard and discovered it had been commandeered by the occupying forces as a bicycle park for the soldiers attending the Soldatenheim.
The family was thus faced with a choice between abandoning their house and business, or trying to manage alongside the Germans. With nowhere else to go, they decided to stay. Inevitably they did get to know some of the soldiers and realised that the majority had no more wish to be involved in the war than the Island’s residents, and some were actively wishing for the allies to win.
Harry’s memories of the Occupation are detailed in his book The Occupation Bicycle Park, which was published by La Haule Books in 1992.
As the war progressed, deprivations and hardship affected everyone; petrol was no longer available, and Harry’s father had to deliver milk by bicycle, the milk churns being carried in holders on either side. On one occasion, while cycling along Hastings Road in front of a German workshop, the frame for the milk churn broke and a helpful German soldier from the engineering workshop rushed out and then rewelded the frame. This soldier was encountered several more times, and he re-enters this story some 70 years later.
Education
Harry was educated at De La Salle College and Victoria College and was a keen sportsman, playing cricket, water polo and football. Harry and his father got to know Arthur Rowe, who was then the manager of Tottenham Hotspur, in the times when the football club carried out their pre-season training in Jersey. On visiting London, Harry was offered a game with the Tottenham Hotspur reserve team playing against West Ham, and so he had the distinction of wearing a Spurs shirt in a football match.
Harry was also a keen musician and would have liked to have gone on to study music after school, but he was obliged to seek a more reliable career and so went to St Luke’s College, Exeter, for one year to train as a teacher. Harry played the violin with fellow musicians and music was something he enjoyed considerably throughout his life. After teacher training, he obtained a job at First Tower Primary School, which he did not find particularly fulfilling, but he was able to transfer to Hautlieu when it opened in 1952. He remained at Hautlieu for the rest of his career, teaching mainly mathematics, physics and electronics; for many years he was the last of Hautlieu’s original teachers.
His dark green Ford Zephyr 6 - which I remember well - was a regular fixture in front of the old school.
At Hautlieu, Harry became involved with football, coaching the school’s team and the Channel Islands Schools team which he took to competitions in the UK, successfully competing against English county teams. Marriage came to Maureen Doris Rowe on 19 April 1954, and they had two children, Nicholas in 1956 and Christopher in 1958. Between 1993 and 1998 three grandchildren, Philippe, Daniel and Verity were born. In her later years Maureen sadly suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease and died in 2012.
Retirement
Following a long career as a school teacher, retirement saw Harry and Maureen volunteering for 11 years at the Durrell Wildlife Preservation Trust, now of course back to Jersey Zoo. He subsequently volunteered with Jersey Heritage, spending two decades in all as a Site Guide at Mont Orgueil, giving history tours which he greatly enjoyed and for which he received many plaudits. The most recent of these was when he did a special tour only last year, on Thursday 27 June, particularly impressive as it included climbing the many steps to the top of Mont Orgueil, aged 90.
He was a marvellous example of how a knowledgeable, enthusiastic communicator can enhance a visit to a heritage site. Over many years of volunteering he must have met, welcomed and educated several hundred, possibly thousands of people at Mont Orgueil. The facts and figures he acquired and shared over the years were vast; he added a huge amount of information to the guideline script with much humour, eg about how, in 1638, both of castle prisoner William Prynne’s ears had been cut off as he had dared to ask ‘how any Christian woman could be so whorishly impudent as to appear on stage’. Harry would ask visitors how this affected Prynne’s eyesight – answer: because his hat would fall down over his eyes.
After the war, the German mechanic mentioned earlier became a monk in Germany and lived to a considerable age. Shortly before his death he was interviewed by German journalist Sonja Zeh, who was researching his life story, which included his time in Jersey during the Occupation. The monk, Brother Aribert Oberheidtmann, mentioned that no one he had met in Jersey would still be alive other than perhaps Harry, who had been a boy at the time. A few years before Maureen’s death, Sonja travelled to Jersey and was introduced to Harry and Maureen and a friendship developed. After Maureen’s death a relationship grew between Harry and Sonja, with many trips to and from Bruchsal and Jersey which brought great enjoyment and fun to Harry’s later years.
According to Jersey Heritage, perhaps the best way to remember Harry Aubin is to focus on his tangible love of Mont Orgueil, summed up in his own words in a letter of thanks to Jersey Heritage: “The castle is a great place and thank goodness Walter (Ralegh) left it standing, because there is little I enjoy more than walking out onto the top on the right day, almost any day”.
