Ray Young (1944-2024)
Readers of Syston Town News will be sad to hear that Ray Young, who was one of the founder members of the Syston History Group, died on Saturday 10th February aged seventy nine. Ray’s mother Minnie was a Syston woman. She married her husband Herbert during World War Two, and the couple had two children, Ray and his sister Margaret.
Ray was born in St. Francis’s maternity home in Leicester in October 1944, and attended Syston Infant and Junior Schools before going on to Secondary Education at Loughborough College School. As a boy Ray attended The ‘Primitive Methodist’ church (which was on the Melton Road where the British Telecom building is now) with his family. He was a founder member of the Boys’ Brigade troop there and later a Captain of the Brigade.
When Ray left school he already had an interest in vintage and antique artefacts and he applied for a job at the Leicester firm of Warner, Shepherd and Wade; — an estate agent and auctioneers which was situated on Halford Street. While working there Ray studied for a qualification with the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and he later became a partner in the firm.
Ray married Margaret Asher in 1971, and he became a member of the Methodist Church on High Street, where he undertook various roles. He was the Property Secretary there for many years, and during the 1980s he stage-managed several of the successful shows that the Church put on.
The Start of Syston Local History Group
In 1988 an appeal was published in Syston’s monthly newspaper ‘the Grapevine’, to see if there was any interest in forming a local history group. In response to this eight people met in the small hall at the Methodist Church that May. Among those attending were Jim Cowling, Ernest and Mary Gamble and their son Dennis, Terry Neal, Lynn Whitehead, Edward Gamble and Ray Young, and these people decided to form a history group that would meet monthly.
Once the group were established, they decided to hold an exhibition in June 1992. This first one was held at the Old Chapel in Chapel Street. It attracted a lot of attention and because of its success the group decided to hold just one more exhibition the following year. However, this second one provoked so much interest that the exhibition then became an annual event.
In September 2000 the group published the first of the Syston Past series of books. This sold out completely and was reprinted in 2003. Syston Past books 2, 3, and 4 followed between 2006 and 2013. Many of the photos in these books came from Ray’s extensive collection.
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in 2015 Felicity Austin started to collect memoirs about WW2 for an exhibition in the parish church. This led to a decision to write a book on the subject, and having acquired a writing partner in Leicester historian Cynthia Brown, the pair asked if Syston Local History group would sponsor publication of the proposed book. The two writers very soon decided that they needed Ray’s help and he willingly joined the team. He was always willing to share his knowledge and his store of photographs of his ‘home town’. Syston in World War II was published by the History Group in 2016 and sold out within a year.
Cynthia Brown remembers ‘It was a great pleasure working with Ray on Syston in World War II. His enthusiasm, good humour and the massive depth of his local knowledge made it a very rewarding experience’.
Ray was part of a different team when worked on the books on ‘Syston in the 20th Century’ which were published just after the Pandemic ended. Ray worked with Diana Smith and Felicity Austin on these two much larger books. I asked Diana what she remembered about working with Ray on these books, and Diana responded with enthusiasm saying that; ‘Ray’s knowledge was invaluable when we were writing the books. I found him easy to talk to and there was a sense of humour beneath the quiet serious surface’.
We leave the final words of this tribute to Tim Garner, Chair of the Syston Local History Group; ‘Ray was the mainstay of the History Group. His vision led to the first of the small Syston History books and the growth of the annual exhibition. He turned the early amateur efforts at display into a quality exhibition, and was able to provide a new display board most years. It is hard to see how the group can go on without him.’
Please note we are unable to give the time and date of Ray’s funeral at the time of going to press. The Stn will publish either in the next issue of the newspaper or via our Facebook page the details once known.
As your editor I would like to add that have had the pleasure of knowing Ray for all the years I have owned the newspaper and if I ever got a request from anywhere in the world from someone wanting to find out about family from Syston he was my go to person. I am going to miss Ray and my thoughts are with Margaret and his family at this time.