My father, Alun Thomas, who has died aged 98, was a teacher at the same school in Leicestershire for three decades. Later he became a wholehearted member of the village in Derbyshire to which he retired, and was also a respected Liberal Democrat politician in local government.
The youngest of five children, Alun was born in Barry, south Wales, to Raymond Thomas and his wife, Rebecca (nee Edwards), and attended Barry grammar school before taking a clerical job with the flour merchants Joseph Rank in Cardiff. As soon as he was 18 he volunteered for the Royal Navy and served in the Fleet Air Arm as a rear gunner and radio operator in the second world war.
