Forum for former BBC staff

Forum for former BBC staff
http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> Notices, obituaries and tributes >> Jim Edwards http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1389862135 Message started by Administrator on Jan 16^th, 2014, 8:49am

Title: Jim Edwards
Post by Administrator on Jan 16^th, 2014, 8:49am

Jim Edwards, a stalwart of the Bush House Newsroom, has died. He was 77 and had been suffering from kidney cancer. Jim joined the Newsroom as a holiday relief sub in 1968 and retired in the early 90s. Funeral details to follow.

Title: Re: Jim Edwards
Post by Administrator on Jan 16^th, 2014, 4:49pm

Jim himself wrote these autobiographical notes a few weeks ago:

James Thomas Edwards was born on 6th February 1936, the son of a goods guard on the railway.

He spent his first years in what were then the leafy suburbs around Crewe until in 1940 his father volunteered for the army at what was considered to be the ripe age of 30.

Jim, his sister who was18 months younger, and his mother moved from Crewe to live with his mother’s parents in the village of Acton Bridge in mid Cheshire, where Jim spent probably the most enjoyable period of his life, playing around the farm, the lanes and the fields with friends from the small preparatory school he attended in the next village one-and-a-half miles away.

When his father was invalided out of the army as an officer cadet with tuberculosis which developed during the strenuous training for service in France, the family moved to Crewe after D-Day. His father spent months and months in hospitals and sanatoria but later was able to start his own business.

Jim was then sent to Sandbach School, founded in the seventeenth century, where he had an undistinguished academic career but enjoyed the rugby and the Combined Cadets.

The school gave him his first taste for foreign travel when in 1948 they travelled on holiday across the still battle damaged France to Switzerland.

Not knowing what he wanted to do for a living, he met a boy on a bus whom he had known at school who told him about his life as a trainee journalist on a local newspaper in the next town. The meeting changed his life and he was able to get a job himself as a cub reporter with his own newspaper in Northwich. From the moment he stepped into the small newsroom, he felt he was among his kind of people. It meant, though, lighting the fire in the editor’s office, sweeping the reporters’ room floor and running out for cigarettes.

He remembered his first story was typical of those given to a new trainee reporter – an account of a local Women’s Institute meeting. But there was also training in court reporting, local amateur dramatic reviews and even covering football matches of which he was not enamoured.

Having completed his indentures during which he had made substantial progress at college in Manchester, he was called up for National Service at the age of 20.

His Sports Editor had suggested that the regiment best suited was the Royal Army Service Corps because they were carried everywhere in trucks, whereas all the others seemed to march. He was commissioned and posted to Cyprus as Second in Command of a RASC supply unit at Middle East Land Force HQ at Episkopi. This was the time of the Cyprus Emergency when the Greeks on the island were fighting for Enosis through their armed wing, EOKA, led by Colonel Grivas. So life was largely confined to the cantonment. There were compensations – they had their own beach!

Later it was back to his newspaper in Northwich to become Chief Reporter before looking for work abroad.

He accepted a 3-year contract in Uganda as Chief Reporter on the main English language newspaper, The Uganda Argos, initially to help prepare the paper for the independence celebrations in October 1962.

Three years in a newly independent African country was exciting, covering the Parliament, the politics, visits by Royals, and Emperor Haile Selassie, accompanied by his little Chihuahua with a diamond encrusted collar which lived in the back of his long limousine.

There was a short spell working for his county newspaper in Chester during which he applied for a job with the BBC World Service, but they took exactly six months to offer him the position. In the meantime, he had accepted a post in the Solomon Islands in the Western Pacific, at first thinking the Solomons were in the Caribbean, but the South Seas seemed equally attractive. There for two years, he wrote the radio news for the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service and produced and presented his own programme of jazz with the signature tune of the Royal Garden Blues.

On the basis of his previous interviews, plus yet another one, Jim was offered a job as a summer relief sub editor with the BBC World Service. He was appointed to the permanent staff at Christmas 1968.

He spent short periods as a correspondent in Washington, the Middle East and in London as Parliamentary Correspondent and UK Affairs Correspondent. Eventually he became one of two Assistant Editors who alternated with operational responsibility for the BBC World Service Newsroom.

Shortly after he was appointed Assistant Editor, he had a heart attack (1984) and a few years later, after the structure of the newsroom was reorganized, he decided to retire.

A year later, Jim accepted what he thought would be a small part time job lecturing at the local further education college, now known as K College, but within two or three weeks, he was working full time with students doing business courses and television production and stayed at the college for ten years.

Title: Re: Jim Edwards
Post by Administrator on Jan 18^th, 2014, 9:38am

The funeral service will be at All Saints, Tudeley, Kent
http://www.tudeley.org/findus.htm
at 3pm on Tuesday, January 28
followed by a burial in the church grounds.

The wake will take place at The Wharf, Tonbridge
http://www.thewharftonbridge.co.uk/
All are welcome to attend both events.
If you are planning to be at The Wharf, Nancy would appreciate being told to help arrange the catering.
Her email address: nelizedwards(insert the @ symbol here)kent2.co.uk

Title: Re: Jim Edwards
Post by Administrator on Feb 2^nd, 2014, 9:54am

Jim's friend and former colleague Bob Trevor delivered the eulogy at this funeral:

Jim’s last words to me were: Old soldiers never die...they simply fade away. Main battle is lost but the rear guard fights on. Jim knew I would understand. One old soldier to another. Or as we would have said in the 1950s, from one old sweat to another.

It was no accident that Jim and I would become great friends. We both lived through the war, spent years as army cadets, started on local newspapers and were soldiers of the new, young queen. Romantic times at the beginning of a new Elizabethan era. Hope was high and patriotism, which had diminished after the war, was reborn. Jim never lost this sense of being.

Jim carried the convictions of those salad days throughout his life. He was a journalist’s journalist. His wife, Elizabeth, has received countless tributes from his former colleagues. Words like erudite, forthright, helpful to newcomers, the complete gentleman, conviction, stalwart, are burned into people’s memories.

The present editor of World Service News, Andy Whitehead, says Jim was a defining figure to whom an entire generation of young journalists looked up to a warm and enthusiastic editor, with an eager smile, but also a firm leader if you failed to deliver or were sloppy in your work. He was no martinet, but he believed in the highest of standards for what was, after all, the most important news broadcaster in the world. The culture of the World Service newsroom persists to this day, 30 years on. And his thanks to them were simply “well written, nicely done, thank you.”

James Thomas Edwards was born on the 6th of February 1936 in Crewe, Cheshire, where his father worked as a freight train guard on the railway. Eighteen months later his sister Kathleen arrived and a further 18 months later his father volunteered for the army and was posted to France as an officer cadet in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Before Dunkirk, Mr Edwards was repatriated and subsequently invalided out with tuberculosis, his life disrupted by constant visits to hospitals and sanatoria. The tightly-knit family moved to rural Cheshire where Jim eventually attended the 17th century-founded Sandbach School. As a 12 year old, he went on a school trip to Switzerland which gave him a lifelong love of travel. His first major trip was to war-torn Cyprus where Colonel Grivas was fighting a war against Britain to join the island to Greece. Murder Mile in Nicosia became a death trap for our troops. Jim, a second lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps, was stationed at Episcope, where they had a private beach and little else as they confined to the barrack area.

Before that, not knowing which career to follow, Jim met a young man on a bus who volunteered the information he was a trainee reporter. Jim liked that idea and soon got a job on his local newspaper in Northwich. “I knew I’d made the right choice after my first day in the newsroom,” he said. He went on a three-year indentures course learning shorthand and typing — our mainstay in those days, and also swept the office floor, made tea and went out to buy cigarettes for his colleagues. His first story was coverage of a Women’s Institute meeting. He covered everything from council meetings, court cases, local amateur dramatics...aIl the aspects of local life. There he learned the trade of which he was so proud. And about this time, he discovered traditional jazz, became an authority on Dixieland music and gained much pleasure from this for the rest of his life.

After demob, he returned to his newspaper, but was soon on his travels again. This time, he signed a three-year contract as Chief Reporter on the Uganda Argos in the lead-up to the African country’s move to independence. An exciting time covering parliament, politics, visits by Royals, a visit by Emperor Haile Selassie. On completion of the tour, he returned to his newspaper in Cheshire before, in 1968, joining the BBC World Service.

Jim enjoyed reporting assignments in Washington, the Middle East and London. Eventually he rose to be one of two Day Editors in the World Service newsroom.

Jim was always a man of strong principles, which he never for a moment went back on. He was always a strong supporter of the National Union of Journalists, no matter how far up the managerial ladder he rose. He valued his Northern roots, his undying belief in the value of journalism and his readiness to help young journalists on the road of life.