Michael McEvoy (31 Aug 1928 - 26 Dec 2020)

Michael was a wonderful man. The world needs more like him!

I came under the influence of 'Mac' in my early teaching career at Bewerley Park OEC. He had a positive and gentle manner of communicating with both Staff and Students and quickly gained the respect of both. It was a model I attempted to emulate for the rest of my teaching career. We all have a time to depart.......Mac certainly left his mark on all who new him. Best wishes to all his family and friends. Sam Cook (Bewerley Park 1973-2003)

What a wonderful man. I wish I had known him

I was sorry to hear the sad news. micheal was such a lovely man and it was a pleasure to care for him while he was at buckshaw thinking of his family xx

Michael McEvoy was a good and devoted husband, father, grandfather and friend, a man of strong faith, and a man who believed in public service. He was a lifelong and accomplished educator, a leader in his field of outdoor education, and a passionate advocate for teaching young people to love outdoor activities.

Michael loved people, he loved spending time with his friends and family, he loved humour, he loved travel, he loved good food enjoyed with others, he loved sport, he loved walking, he loved good conversation and a good story well told, he loved singing and he sang a lot. He lived a long, rich, active life, and mostly in good health until his last years. He was a man who had a strong, immensely positive influence on everyone around him all his life. He was loved by many.

He was born in Salford, Manchester in 1928, the fourth and youngest child of Peter and Margaret McEvoy. As a boy, Michael was a good student, a good athlete and a good catholic, serving for many years as an altar boy. He worked summers on the Manchester Ship Canal where his father was in charge of dredging a section of the canal that ran down to Liverpool. After Secondary school, he worked for a year at a Salford accountancy firm where he was good with numbers, but not keen on working in an office. He was called up to national service in 1946, and shipped off with his infantry regiment to post-war Germany.

Demobbed in 1948, he returned to De la Salle College, where he’d taken his School Certificate, this time to study for a Teaching Certificate. When he graduated in 1951, his reference for a teaching post at All Souls Primary in Salford from his Headmaster, Brother Columban, said, ‘Intellectually he is well-equipped. His personality is vivid, fresh and radiates enthusiasm and happiness...He is a hard worker and full of ideas. In Rugger, Cricket, Athletics and Gymnastics he has a superb record, and in this respect he would be invaluable on this alone. He is a very fine Catholic young man, devoted to his religion, who practices and preaches his faith fearlessly. I really cannot speak too highly of him’.

In 1955, Michael met the love of his life, Tess Donnelly, herself a recent teaching graduate and fellow Mancunian. They were married soon after, and in 1958, their first child, Elizabeth, was born. In 1959, their second, Susanne, arrived, and the family moved to Devon where Michael took a post as a Senior Instructor at the Outward Bound School in Ashburton. It was there that Michael found his true vocation, outdoor education, and where his son, Tim, was born.

Outward Bound’s challenging outdoor adventure programme to educate young people from all backgrounds, to focus on emotional development, leadership and the importance of human interdependence would inform Michael’s ideas and guide him for the rest of his career in education. In an article written in 1973, while Headmaster at Bewerley Park Centre for Outdoor Pursuits, near Pateley Bridge in the Yorkshire Dales, he wrote: ‘outdoor education is not a supplementary matter, but something fundamental to our thinking about learning, personal growth, emotional growth and social development.’

Bewerley Park was a residential outdoor education centre and, for 10 years under Michael’s leadership it become a model for the kind of education which gave young people - who’d often never left the cities where they lived - the chance to meet kids from all over Yorkshire, to experience nature, often for the first time, to learn kayaking, mountaineering, caving, camping, sailing and many other skills that equipped them not just for the outdoors, but, even more, for their later lives.

Michael was a born leader and on leaving Bewerley Park in 1975 many of the letters he received from his former staff and students thanked him for the guidance he gave them and are testament to his subtle leadership.

Michael was good company. His boyish good nature, which his teachers, friends and fellow teammates often noted as he grew up, never left him. He was wry, ironic, charmingly cheeky, but always amiable, reliable and generous. It drew people to him and he was regularly invited to serve in advisory educational roles and on committees, not just for his years of experience and straight talk, but also because he was good company.

When Michael retired in 1991, he and Tess bought a former gite rural in the Aveyron, spending the warmer months in France in the little village of La Faboulie. They became firm friends with their neighbours; Michael enjoyed walking with friends, speaking serviceable french and spending time with some of his favourite people, his grandchildren, during the summer holidays. Tess and Michael had many happy years at La Faboulie. Every April, they would happily pack the car to bursting for the pilgrimage to France. It was there, in 2007, that they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

When Tess began to suffer the effects of Alzheimer's, which afflicted both Tess and Michael cruelly in their 80s, Michael nursed Tess tirelessly, and was by her bedside when she passed away in 2012. He never really recovered from the loss of his beloved Tess.

Michael is survived by his daughters, Elizabeth and Susanne, his son Tim, and his grandchildren, Kaleb, Max, Harry, Daniel and Abbi. His ashes will be scattered this summer, together with Tess’s, at Brimham Rocks, near Pateley Bridge in Yorkshire at a memorial to remember them both.

In memory of Michael. A very nice man.

So sorry for your loss, my thoughts are with you all.

I have so many fond memories of time I spent with your Dad, and your Mum over the years and I feel honoured to have got to know you all. Such a lovely family, and Suzanne in particular is most definitely a very good friend, for life.

I will always remember the fun times we had over the years.

RIP now Mike, you will be sorely missed but we are all happy that you are now re-united with your darling wife.
Xxxx

Many happy memories of time spent with Uncle Michael and Aunty Tess at Pately Bridge. We were fortunate to have such kind supportive relatives as them and also Aunty Rita (Michael’s sister) and Uncle Gerry.

One memory from the many.
We were taken, as children, to Brimham rocks by Uncle Michael one evening. He amazed us by walking up a rock face by putting his feet on two opposite sheer vertical walls. Instant hero status if he wasn’t before. While doing this he said “If you think you are going to fall turn around and choose the spot where you are going to land”. That sounds like advice for life in general but I think he meant it in a practical way.

Mike was passionate about outdoor Ed. and all of us who worked under him at Bewerley were lucky to have been given a chance to help realise his ideas and dreams. A sad loss for the O. Ed. World that he helped to allow to grow.

We were all so very sad to hear this news about Uncle Mike. What an awful year this has been in so very many ways!!! Given though the hard time he has had in the last few years - it was probably for the best. As maybe so often, Shakespeare finds appropriate words, here from King Lear: "Vex not his Spirit: O, let him pass! He hates him who, upon the rack of this rough world, would stretch him out longer."
We can all take comfort in the sure knowledge that he is now at peace and no doubt chatting happily with Tess, Rita and Joan, and looking down on all his family with pride and love.
I have so many happy memories of our many family trips to Pately Bridge, Brimham Rocks and the Dales.!!! I am particularly grateful for the chance that Uncle Mike gave me to join a 2-week Bewerley Park sailing course on the Clyde estuary in Scotland - the memories of that trip, including the close encounter, while in a 10 foot dinghy, with a British nuclear submarine, will live with me forever - as will my love of sailing and the sea.
Rest Peace Uncle Mike
Chris, Natalia, Alissa and Julia xxx

We are all thinking about you at this difficult time. I have lovely memories of Uncle Mike stretching back as far as Pateley Bridge and later at Blackpool and at all of our family gatherings. He was a wonderful man, always ready with a smile and a joke, and I will always remember him with great affection.

I was very sorry to hear that U Michael passed away but relieved that it happened peacefully. He definitely deserved that.
I know that the last few years had been difficult but I will always remember him as a truly inspirational figure. He was always upbeat, positive, full of life and had a great sense of humour. As kids, we always looked forward to visiting U Michael, A Tess and family because it was such great fun.
He was a top man and I will always remember him that way.

Everyone who met Granddad should count themselves lucky. 

He was a teacher, a story teller, a snappy dresser, an adventurer, a humanitarian, a public servant, amateur singer, a gourmand and a thoroughly decent man. The most decent I have ever known. 

The last ten years of his life were not good ones - but they seem entirely eclipsed by the years that he was healthy and touched everyone he met with his humor, warmth and decency.  

The world is a better place for him having been here and I, personally am a better person for having known him. It is in that way, that he is not and will never be truly gone. 

He was a great man who touched many with honour, integrity, humility and genuine love and respect. Rest In Peace Uncle Michael.

From David Fox, ex instructor, Head of Caving, at Bewerley Park.

I was very sorry to hear from Dick Bancroft about the passing of your father. Mike was a wonderful person, very kind and considerate and also able to achieve so much.

I worked full time at Bewerley Park between Jan 1974 and April 1981. I was fortunate to be able to carry out some voluntary instructing during 1973 and remember very clearly my first expedition, a walking trip through Kielder Forest with your father. Just as we were about to pitch camp one night one of our group managed to get himself bitten by a snake: I recall the lengthy discussion we had about what to do - finally deciding to do nothing and simply wait and see how the patient was the next morning. Fortunately he was none the worse and we managed to carry on with the walk.

Mike had a way of posing thoughtful questions in a quiet manner. You often did not realise quite how much they probed into your thinking until some time later. During my time at Bewerley Park he interviewed me for the role of head of caving, asking suddenly how my English degree influenced my approach to working as an instructor. It is a question for which I continued to find new answers until I finally retired. I wish I could have told him.

Bewerley Park was an important episode for many people and left a lasting legacy on their outlook to life. This was very much due to the ethos that your father established. We were all one family and everyone mattered. I know I have carried this spirit with me in all the outdoor work I have done since and have tried to pass it on to others. I shall always remeber your father most fondly for setting such lasting foundations.

With many fond memories at this sad time. There is indeed much to celebrate.