Whitehawk indebted to Powell family over decades

Nevertheless, the dynastic presence of the Powells is still symbolised by the patriarchal figure of 88-year-old Ron who was largely instrumental in founding the club in 1945. Starting as chief cook and bottle washer, followed by stints as secretary-treasurer and chairman totalling 30 years, he is patron while eldest son Ken, 64, served 40 years on the committee until stepping down as treasurer earlier this year.

Previously Ken had logged 23 years in the chair, and influenced by his father, played his first game for the club aged 14. Both Ron and Ken, together with Ron's other son, David, are life members. Whitehawk is in their bones.

Sporting excellence cannot be measured necessarily in physical accomplishment and the number of medals and trophies gained. In terms of service to the community, Ron and Ken are giants, especially Ron.

When you think that he has devoted 66 years of his life to Whitehawk it is a truly astonishing record and one, so far as I am aware, unrecognised in a civic sense as it so richly deserves.

Not that this modest man is looking for plaudits from the town hall or anywhere else, but when honours lists come out either every New Year, or in the gift of the queen, you have to wonder why Ron's name has never been put forward. After all, Whitehawk, that began as a significant social and communal venture in the 1930s, is an important part of the new city map.

"Whitehawk football club was a catalyst for the entire estate," said Ken. "Over 1,000 people congregated together when the club started and it was a like one big happy family and no trouble at all.

"If, as a kid you got up to anything, it would get back quickly. So many families were related and news travelled like wildfire. I cannot remember many bad things happening. Nowadays it is different."

As Ron lives in a retirement home he gets frequent visits from Ken, who himself took early retirement from the railways nine years ago. He is a guarantor and trustee of the club and watches all their matches. "What Ken says about the family element at Whitehawk is true," said Ron. "We had seven sets of brothers playing at the same time spread throughout the teams. On the estate in the old days you could always leave your front door open without fear of theft. Everybody knew where we lived, at 13, Lintott Avenue as the washing line was usually full of kit.

"Ivy, my wife, who passed away not long ago, did all the washing, ironing and mending. Besides the family washing she was washing three sets of football kit each week. When it could not be dried out of doors I used to carry it round to the school and the caretaker allowed me to dry it in the boiler house. And when shirts first started to be numbered, she stitched them on and did all that for 30 years and brought up a family."

In those formative years Ron had no telephone and had to work from a call box. In addition to the paper work he had to provision the tea hut, prepare the dressing rooms, fill the baths, pack the gear for three teams, pump up footballs, check the first-aid boxes, compile the programme, put out the floodights for training that he, as an electrician, made up himself plus organising away travel that once ran to 17 coaches.

Finished? That is only a sketch of Ron's routine.

Main club funding came from 2,500 tickets sold each week. These Ron put into bundles. As the years rolled by his children helped. Then the tickets had to be delivered to the sellers, some as far afield as Southwick. As secretary-treasurer it was also Ron's duty to collect the money and on average he spent one evening a week attending to the club's finances. No wonder he says proudly: "In all the 30 years I was doing that, the club was never in the red."

And he also had a day job. "Being an electrician and living on the estate there was many a knock on the door with a 'Ron, could you help me, our cooker has gone off,' or 'Ron, the lights have gone out,' or one of the local boys asking for a loan of a football. When he retired in 1975 from Seeboard after more than 40 years in the supply industry, Ron claimed to have visited more than 80,000 customers. Yet he still found time to be a shop steward and enjoy ballroom dancing with Ivy.

Ron worked for others because that was the way he was brought up as the eldest of nine kids of a poor family in Canning Street. A few years ago he put down on paper the story of his life that is surely worth a study by local historians. It has a distinct bearing on his pivotal role in Whitehawk FC whose playing members today, if presented with the manuscript, would feel they were peeking into a Dickensian slumland.

As the eldest son of a milkman, Ron, before going to school, had to take a pillowcase to the baker's shop in St George's Road and buy six pennyworth of stale bread and pick-up skimmed milk at the ice cream factory in Eastern Road. Ron said: "Coming out of school at midday I would go to the soup kitchen in Southover Street to collect the family dinners and take them home before going back to Park Street. On a Friday I would have to go to the pawnshop and pick-up dad's suit for the weekend and then take it back again on Monday morning."

Highlight of the week was Friday when all the family had a bath, in turn, in an old-fashioned copper in the scullery. The little members of the family went in two at a time. This was Brighton in the early 1920s when appalling slums in the Carlton Hill area were to continue for at least another decade before redevelopment and the emergence of the Whitehawk estate.

"Despite all the hardships we suffered, we were a happy family," said Ron whose first job on leaving school at 14 was as an extra page at the Hotel Metropole. Then came a succession of jobs; working at Anscombe's Nurseries, errand boy for Home and Colonial, labourer and milkman.

He didn't play much football but attended bible class with the 7th Brighton Boys' Brigade and sang in the choir for 20 years at St Matthews. "I married Ivy in January, 1935 at St Matthews. We didn't have a honeymoon because I had to go and bottle up at 3.30 in the morning the day after we got married because I did not bottle up the evening before, and our wedding had to take place at 4pm because I had my milk rounds to do."

When Normanton's Dairies went broke, Ron had no wages for six weeks. A baby was on the way and Doreen Barbara arrived in February, 1936 and now lives on Vancouver Island. Ron's next job was road making in Southwick at a shilling an hour. After that he obtained work at the Brighton Electricity Undertaking on a cable laying gang.

Called-up in 1940 he enlisted in the Royal Sussex Regiment only to be transferred to the Military Police although after 18 months he had an operation for varicose veins and was declared unfit for further military service and returned to the electricity company.

The good news was two-fold. Ron and Ivy moved to Whitehawk Crescent and the company doctor certified the operation had been successful and Ron was A1 again. "Early in 1943 the two local policemen, George Boxall and George Oakley, asked if I could help with what was then the Whitehawk and Manor Farm Boys' Club. The two Georges, who along with Dixie Doo and Wilf Wickham, ran the boxing team and another helper was Bob Watkins. We had the strongest youth boxing team in the south with Johnnie and Pat Brazil, Pat Sullivan, the Green brothers, the Tettersell brothers and Gordon Dale. And, of course, there was Les Wood who won an ABA title.

"We also won the Brighton Youth Football League three times and the Sussex Minor Cup and we won the Brighton Youth Cricket League every year until it packed up. Another boy who brought honour to the club was Henry Wood when he played centre-half for England Boys. By now I was secretary-leader of the club and owing to the war and police work, I was short of helpers.

"When the war ended I ran harvest camps for the lads for three years. We were the only club in Sussex to answer the call of the Minister of Agriculture to run these camps to help the farmers. We did have a lot of help and advice at the Boys' Club from the Rotary Club, but it was no wonder the lads grew up to think the council had no time for them, or, indeed, the people of Whitehawk. When the war ended many former members returned but, of course, the age limit was 18 and they were no longer eligible. So, with Buster Brown, the club trainer, and Stan Butcher, the chairman, we decided to start as the Old Boys' Club and joined the Brighton League."

The rest is well documented as Whitehawk romped to success after success becoming the premier amateur club in Brighton and Hove. Ron finally stood down and then found himself embroiled in a battle against cancer, losing part of his left hand in the process and also his spleen.

Members of the successive teams weren't so lucky. "Robin Cox died young of cancer," recalled Ron. "Suzy Oliver and Ronnie Bliss have gone, and Carlo Strazza." The Italian student who suddenly turned up and asked for a game was one of the few to wear the famous red and white and who did not live on the estate.

"He was a very good centre-forward and popular with the lads. They loved piling into the Fiat that he used to drive at terrifying speeds. Poor lad, he was killed in a car crash in Milan."

Does such a full and useful life leave Ron alone with his memories? Not at all, he's too busy on the committee of Home Lees House and ... acting as bingo caller for his fellow residents.