Gareth Jones
[bas relief by Oleh Lesiuk]
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TOPICAL
'Are you Listening NYT?' U.N. Speech - Nov 2009 |
Gareth Recognised at Cambridge - Nov 2009 |
Reporter and the Genocide - Rome, March 2009 |
Order of Freedom Award -Nov 2008 |
Premiere of 'The Living' Documentary Kyiv - Nov 2008 |
Gareth Jones 'Famine' Diaries - Chicago 2008 |
Aberystwyth Memorial Plaque 2006 |
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IntroductionMy Uncle GarethGareth’s soul has never been laid to rest and his family speaks of him frequently as if his death only occurred yesterday. His mother considered that her beloved son had been the first victim of World War Two. After Gareth’s death she always wore the black of mourning: it was a terrible tragedy for her to bear. She had lived her life through him and it was the stories of her youthful experiences in Russia that gave Gareth the interest in foreign travel. To his father it was the most traumatic event of his entire life. I remember clearly being told by my father that bandits in China had killed Gareth. I was standing holding onto the banisters three steps from the bottom of the stairs in our London house. I remember the harrowing journey from Paddington to Cardiff by Great Western Railway with his ashes in a casket on the seat directly opposite me. They had been brought back on the SS Rawalpindi to be borne to their final resting-place in Barry. It was a cold December day in 1935. There was thick fog, which delayed the train and the journey seemed to take so many, many hours. Gareth was born in Barry on August 13th 1905. His father was Major Edgar Jones, O.B.E., T.D., M.A., LL.D., for 35 years the headmaster of the Barry County School for boys, respected and loved by the thousands of pupils who passed through his school. He was considered by some to be the “Matthew Arnold” of Wales and that great English headmaster described the loss of a son in these words: “Be think thee for an only son what was that grief”. Edgar Jones, known to all as ‘The Major’, was the noblest of characters. He understood tolerance and imparted to his students an understanding which enabled them to live in harmony with one another. He was modest in nature and a Christian gentleman in the true sense of the word. He had infinite interests and fostered these in the many boys that passed through his school. Many honours were bestowed on him not least that of being made a Freeman of the Borough of Barry. He was active in his support of the League of Nations and was a man of peace. |
Gareth with his Mother |
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