Douglas Whittaker (retired 2000)

Born and bred in Knotty Ash - yes, missus, it does exist - Doug attended Liverpool Institute with Peter Sissons, and a year ahead of Paul McCartney and George Harrison, and there joined the C.C.F., which has played such a part in his life. In those innocent days, cadets took their rifles home on the tram, cleaned them at home over the weekend and returned them to school on Monday.

A scholarship took him to Christ Church, Oxford and after graduating he took up his first post in 1962, teaching mathematics at Bedford Modern. He survived a headmaster fierce enough to cancel half-term holiday when nobody owned up to making a noise in assembly, and left after two years, but not before organising a Field Day at Ampthill Park. He brought this bright idea to his next appointment: Haberdashers'.

In his first spell at Elstree, he learned to sail, and has since gone on to become a Senior Instructor of the Royal Yachting Association, passing on his skills to generations of Haberdasher boys. After four years here, he moved on to Atlantic College, in South Wales, where life consisted of sums, sailing, sweated labour, but not much sleep before returning to Elstree in 1970 becoming Head of Mathematics in 1973.

As generations of boys will testify, Doug is an inspiring teacher, certainly a one-off, possessed of great skill in the techniques of Mathematics ... and the only member of staff able to remove his shirt without first removing his jacket. His colleagues will testify to his remarkable knowledge of so many branches of the subject. Well, so what? The teachers here are expected to know their subjects. What makes Doug special is his ability to challenge the boys to provoke them into thinking in new ways, to give them the desire and the confidence to get stuck in to the problems the like of which they have never seen before.

The later success of his students at university is directly related to the combative approach which he instills in them. He is always ready to scrap the lesson and go down any promising side-track, sees a syllabus as a bare minimum to be taught, and coursework as the feeble-minded drivel it usually is.

In the 1960s, he introduced computing here, making Haberdashers' one of the first schools in the land to do it, and in 1998 two years from retirement, instead of thinking of slippers and firesides, he set up his first problem-solving weekend conference - in France, of course where else? - an idea which has now expanded to three conferences a year in various places. Doug will still run these in retirement, and will keep his mathematical muscles in trim by teaching two courses for the Open University, for which he has taught since its inception.

His management of the Maths. Department is much appreciated by his colleagues. It is characterised by a complete absence of paper and minutes, and a scarcity of meetings. He prefers instead the method of conversation between humans; this results in harmony and mutual respect. The Mathematics Department is indeed a happy ship.

He became an officer in the C.C.F. at Bedford Modern, initially in the R.A.F. section. He switched his allegiance to the Royal Navy at the start of his second spell at Elstree, and became the Commanding Officer of the R.N. section in 1976. In 1985 he was appointed Contingent Commander of Haberdashers' C.C.F., and attained the naval rank of Commander, which is as far as James Bond ever got.

Membership of the corps at Elstree is voluntary, as it should be, but by the mid 1970s numbers had fallen away, and by the mid-1980s had recovered to about 180. That the figure these days is nearly 300 is due in no small measure to Doug's enthusiasm and vision. He changed General Inspections from large static parades to all-action inter-service competitions, releasing the energy of the cadets. He encouraged giving cadets as much responsibility as possible on the grounds that they learn leadership by having to lead.

The annual Prefects' Training Day, which he and Mark Lloyd-Williams run, owes much to ideas of C.C.F. leadership training. He expanded the amount of adventurous training and acted upon the fact that C.C.F. stands for Combined Cadet Force, encouraging joint activities between the sections; for example all three services use Ampthill Park for the October Field Day.

He has always been ahead of the game foreseeing the litigious, health and safety obsessed world we now live in, and the reduced financial support from the M.O.D.; his planning and provision has ensured that the corps will continue to flourish.

We wish Doug all the best for his retirement when, no doubt, he will indulge his passion for travel, with the added bonus of travelling in term-time rather than in the school holidays. As a teacher, a head of department, a contingent commander and a friend, he is the genuine article. He will be missed.