Sidney Lightman – ThA 35-41

Sidney was a LCC scholar.  At CH, apart from some initial homesickness he was happy.  He remembered with appreciation that Mrs Flecker invited all new boys, in small groups, to tea, a custom that was discontinued two decades later.  As a Jew he had to attend Divinity classes when a junior, but later was excused them.  However his spiritual education was not neglected and he was encouraged to have Hebrew lessons by correspondence from the Walthamstow Synagogue.  Exercises were completed, sent back and marked.  His school career was unremarkable and he was always grateful to his headmaster, Mr H L O Flecker, who was instrumental in finding him his first employment on leaving CH, with Carreras, a cigarette manufacturer.  Since his initial salary was very low indeed (₤2 3s 6d, weekly), Mr Flecker arranged for him to receive an additional ₤2 a week for two years after leaving school, a not infrequent happening in those days.

When aged 19 he was called up and became an infantry signalman with the Royal Fusiliers, but was selected to become a navy signalman.  He served in a minesweeper in the Mediterranean and then on two Greek destroyers, for every Greek ship then had to have one British RN seaman aboard, usually a signalman.  While serving he received 200 cigarettes each month, as did all ex-employees of Carreras.  Finally he was assigned to HMS Othello, a coal burning minesweeper.  In spite of this designation his ship patrolled and escorted others.  On HMS Othello he was advised to apply for a commission, but he declined to do so.

After demobilisation he returned to Carreras, took a management training course and then became responsible for a small factory manufacturing cigarette packets.  When Israel fought its War of Independence he volunteered for what became the Israel Navy, almost certainly the only Old Blue to do so.  After that war he stayed on till 1953, working successively in a cigarette company and then as an editor and translator; fields in which he stayed for the remainder of his life, initially as a translator of articles in economics from German, French and Hebrew into English.  Because of an inadequate salary he also gave English lessons in the evening and life was not easy there.  On return to Britain he worked for various companies, ending as Foreign Editor of the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ and founding editor of its travel guide.  After his formal retirement he set up a translation agency, happily working there till the end of his life.

Sidney had little formal interaction with Housey after 1941, but for many years he maintained close contact with a few Old Blue contemporaries, outliving all of them.  He was not a ’joiner’ but always deeply appreciated all that he had received at and from Housey and would speak of this very frequently.  Sidney has three children.  He was very happily married to Ray for 58 years, however she predeceased him.