Mrs Mary Steel

A riveting mix of humorous recollections and profound home truths, garnered during the life-long career in teaching of former Head of Howell’s School, Denbigh, Mrs Mary Steel, provided an absorbing evening for a packed attendance at an open meeting of the Rotary Club of Rhyl at Faenol Fawr. Introducing the guest speaker for what was her third visit to the club in recent years, Senior vice-president Keith Roberts said the capacity audience of members, partners and guests, bore complimentary testimony to their delight at her welcome return. Thanking the club for their latest kind invitation, Mrs Steel credited many of the values she had sought to inject into her long and varied career as a modern languages teacher and twice as Headteacher, including four years in Nigeria, to the incalculable influence of her upbringing in the valleys of South Wales. The enduring verities set out by her parents of tolerance, empathy and integrity, aligned to a readiness to listen and forbear that had been instilled into her as a child, remained indelibly at the heart of her approach to a career that had given her the most enormous pleasure and sense of privilege. To be entrusted with such a character-forming challenge in such a rapidly changing period of secondary education, she said, made teaching the most satisfying job in the world, with the greater part of its rewards coming from the children themselves. The profound thanks of the club for another warm and insightful address was given by past President Gareth Wynne Jones who said he was sure that all those present would wholly subscribe to the incontrovertible truths of what they had heard. He looked forward to yet another such visit in the not too distant future. Earlier President Rod Brocklehurst thanked those members who had given of their time to assist at the club’s stand at the St Asaph Country Fayre on Sunday while secretary Gordon Marshall announced plans to welcome Abergele to a joint meeting in November, alongside plans to strengthen ties with Rhyl’s daughter club St Asaph.