Family
Peter Venables
Nephew
Eric Hawkins, or Uncle Eric as I always knew him, was to me the most scholarly gentlemen I have ever known, and at the same time one of the most kind.
From childhood I remember the Christmas gatherings at Devonshire Road and Hydro Avenue where the whole family would sing along led by Eric at the piano, I learnt the words of songs that I remember to this day standing by the piano watching Eric play.
One of my most vivid memories is of staying with him and Ellen ("Auntie Ellen" to me) whilst he was allowing me to use the University language labs to improve my French in preparation for 'A' levels. In the evenings he would give me a glass of Madeira which seemed to me to be the height of sophistication.
Later on he was responsible, inadvertently, for a meeting that changed my life. In the early '70s he ran a summer school in Halifax teaching English to the children of those newly arrived from the Indian sub-continent. I took part two years running. As well as volunteers from York University and elsewhere like myself, there were some sixth form students from Cumbria. One of these students somehow became - and still is! - my wife June. Without him I would not have met her!
I have a lasting picture in my mind's eye of him playing the 'cello, a studied look of concentration, beautiful music, with strong fingers shaping the vibrato on the strings.