The following obituary was written by David Robins (CR 69-08) and Mark Ind (PS 80-85)

JKI, Jack Kenneth Ind, was appointed to teach Classics at Tonbridge in 1963 by Michael McCrum, himself a classicist. Jack joined John Smalman-Smith and Geoff Allibone in a young department overseen by the avuncular James Howarth. Jack came to Tonbridge from a vicarage upbringing, via Lichfield Cathedral Choir School, Marlborough College, National Service in the Royal Artillery Greats at St John’s College, Oxford, and a first teaching post at Wellingborough College. In the space of seven years Jack, and Betty after their marriage in 1964, lived in digs in the Shipbourne Road, the top floor flat in Ravenswood, a flat in Dry Hill park Crescent, a house in Portman Park and a house in Dry Hill Park Road, before their move to School House.

Initially the house tutor in Manor House under Vernon Hedley-Jones, Jack was also able to fulfil his love of sport, administering and refereeing the school Rugby and umpiring Hockey in the Michaelmas and Lent terms respectively. During summer terms, he led the school tennis club for many years, not without a deep respect and love of cricket. He also loved running, both organising the school cross country or as part of his own early morning routine. In the classroom he was a very well-respected teacher of Latin and Greek, as well as Divinity. The School Inspection (pre-Ofsted) in his first term, was particularly complimentary about the ‘new master’ leading a lower-sixth Divinity discussion on creation narratives.

When Michael McCrum left for the headship of Eton in 1970, Jack was asked to be Housemaster of School House, the first Housemaster not to be the Headmaster of the School since 1553. It was a daunting challenge. With his wife Betty and three young children Jack took on 90 or so boys, 50% more than in other houses. The boys’ elongated accommodation stretched along the top floor of the main school building from the current Geography Dept in the south to the Classics Dept in the north. The Housemaster’s house, South Wing House, was on the Ironside cloisters, 100 stairs below, and as far as possible from the Novi studies at the northern end! Little modernisation had occurred since construction of the main building in the mid-nineteenth century. The only staff resident on the top floor was the Matron, the redoubtable Myrtle Grigson with her corgi, Angharad. They had a small bedsit and used the junior boys’ bathroom after lights out. House catering was complicated, as the boys’ food, and some for the housemaster and family, were produced initially in the ‘house kitchen’, still shared with the new Headmaster, Robert Ogilvie and his family. This room now the Admissions Office.

Managing such an awkwardly distributed community in the 1970s, a turbulent time for boarding schools, was not easy, but Jack took it on with energy, organisation and integrity and gained a reputation for running a respected and steadying regime. Those of us who were his House Tutors learned much from his systematic example, even if some of us could not match his apparently unlimited energy. School House boys, however, enjoyed their proximity to classrooms and school facilities, and appreciated living in a building which, in those days, had exits and entrances which were impossible to secure at any time of night or day. The basement, of what is now the Maths Department, was occupied by Welldon House before its move to its current site. Anything going wrong in the WH common room was easily blamed on straying Sc members. The School House Praes room was in the tower above the Porter’s Lodge and gave access (with a duplicate key) to the roof for sunbathing and smoking. An aerial publicity photograph, commissioned by Michael McCrum for a prospectus, revealed the presence of several relaxed teenagers on the roof.

Jack’s upbringing gave him a strong Christian faith with a humility and a fairness which was positively experienced by all those around him. He also retained a mischievous sense of humour, teasing very gently, and you might not notice you were being teased but for the twitch of his mouth and a twinkle in his eye. A fourth child arrived during his tenure of School House. Two of their four children were ‘home grown’ and two were ‘grafted in’, adopted as those in need of parents, the family that Jack and Betty had long intended. The Ind family created a warm and welcoming home in the south wing. This was an admirable achievement for eleven years in a house not designed for house-masterly entertaining or interviewing of parents.

Jack had local interests outside the school and was a much-loved Lay Reader at Tonbridge Parish Church, preaching and leading memorable family services. His natural career progression was towards headship, and he left Tonbridge in April 1981 to become Headmaster of Dover College, where he and Betty had 10 happy years. They returned for a year to Tonbridge in the early 90s with Jack teaching Classics and Divinity, before teaching in a number of schools across the south of England. They finally retired to a house in Tonbridge, near to their oldest child, Becca, and her family.

(CR 1963-1981 & 1991- 1992)