Trevor West:LAST SATURDAY Trevor West sat on the steps of Midleton College and reminisced for almost an hour with the principal Simon Thompson.
Just three days before his death at the age of 74, the former Trinity College Dublin senator and academic was in reflective mode, and there was much to remember for a man whose passions covered sport, education, literature, history and politics.
His father Timothy had been headmaster at Midleton, the 300-year-old co-educational boarding and day school in Co Cork, from 1928 to 1960, and so it had been a childhood home for the retired maths professor who maintained lifelong links with the school.
Generations of Trinity College students also remember Trevor West, who as well as being a lecturer and later associate professor, was a stalwart of several of the university sporting clubs, a junior jean (dean of discipline), a keen supporter of Trinity Week and the Trinity Ball, and a chronicler in his writings of many of the sporting achievements of its students.
“He was in many ways the Mr Chips of Trinity,” said Senator Seán Barrett, a senior lecturer at the college and also a former junior dean. “He lived on campus, he was a regular at cricket matches in his aged duffle coat and he was very much in the tradition of RB McDowell who died last year and who also managed to be very popular figure despite the disciplinary role of junior dean.”
West’s interest in politics and his role as one of a tiny group of liberal senators, which included former president Mary Robinson and Press Ombudsman John Horgan, brought him to the attention of the wider public in the 1970s.
He had been Robinson’s election agent when she first ran for the Seanad. When he was elected for the Trinity constituency in the byelection caused by the death of Owen Sheehy Skeffington in 1970, he soon established a reputation as one of the few liberal voices in the Seanad.
In her recently published autobiography, Everybody Matters, Robinson paid a warm tribute to Trevor West and John Horgan for their support in her efforts to change the law banning contraceptives.
Horgan recalled this week that when he and Robinson wanted to put down a Bill on this issue in 1970, they could not get the required third signature from among the entire membership of the Seanad, until Trevor West was elected and supported them.
What is less well known is West’s long commitment to reconciliation in the North which led to a close association with UVF leader Gusty Spence, who announced the loyalist ceasefire in 1994. West was quietly influential in nudging forward the peace process. Ulick O’Connor, a friend who in 1981 got into Long Kesh to see Spence through the good offices of the former senator, has said West had a huge effect in bringing opposing sides together in Northern Ireland.
Almost 30 years before the Belfast Agreement was signed, in a letter to the New York Review of Books, the then senator West had cautioned that in order to isolate the extremists from moderate nationalist support “it is essential to set up a form of government in Northern Ireland in which both sections of the community have confidence”. He added, presciently: “American pressure on Britain was a crucial factor in the struggle for independence after the Easter Rising of 1916. It could well be crucial again.”
He was the eldest of four sons born in May 1938 to Timothy West and Dorothy (MacNeill) and was educated at Midleton College and at High School, Dublin, before winning a scholarship to Trinity where he earned a first-class degree in maths. He became one of a small number of Irish students to win an “1851 Exhibition Scholarship” and he gained a doctorate at Cambridge before beginning his teaching career at Glasgow University. Some years ago he attended a reception at Buckingham Palace for recipients of the scholarship at the invitation of Prince Philip.
He later taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, before returning to Trinity as a maths lecturer, where he published extensively and immersed himself in college life.
He was a member of the college’s co-ordinating committee for sport, the Dublin University Central Athletic Club, for 40 years, serving as chairman for 30 years, and was heavily involved in the campaign to build the new sports hall at Trinity. He also spearheaded a campaign to save the College Park at Trinity when it seemed it might be sacrificed for development.
For 11 years he was honorary secretary of the Irish Universities Rugby Union. He is a former president of the Trinity College cricket club and soccer club and was a stalwart of the rugby club, where he encouraged many international players and household names, including Dick Spring, Donal Spring, Hugo MacNeill and Philip Orr.
In his book The Bold Collegians: Development of Sport in Trinity College, Dublin, he traced the history of the university’s sporting community, while also providing a series of snapshots of such sporting personalities as Samuel Beckett, Oliver Gogarty, Maeve Shankey, JP Mahaffy, Harry Read, Dickie Lloyd, Denis Coulson, the Christle brothers, John Robbie, John Prior, Brendan Mullin and Hugo MacNeill.
He also wrote an acclaimed biography of the founder of the Irish co-operative movement, Horace Plunkett, Co-operation and Politics, which was published in 1976.
His brother John, the former international rugby referee, described Trevor as a Renaissance man whose devotion to students and former students never faltered. “He married late but very happily to Maura Lee who has been fantastic in looking after him,” he said.
Trevor West had an eclectic group of friends which included Seamus Heaney and Brendan Kennelly, as well as many in academia and sport .
“He was a gentleman and a gentle man,” said Midleton principal Simon Thompson. West’s support of Midleton College as a member of the board of governors and as a friend to generations of students would be impossible to measure, he added.
The funeral service takes place today at St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork at 1pm, at which Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross Paul Colton will give the homily. He is survived by his wife Maura Lee, his stepson Ian, and his brothers John and Brian. Another brother, Neill, predeceased him.
Timothy (Trevor) West: Born May 8th, 1938; died October 30th, 2012