Early Years
The son of Hugh Victor Melvin and Maisie Winifred Driscoll, Murray Melvin left his North London secondary school as Head Prefect. A qualification he says he gained by always having clean fingernails and well combed hair. At his leave-taking ceremony, the Headmaster informed his parents, Maisie and Victor Melvin: "His fingers tell me he should be put to the piano", a subject not on the school curriculum and not mentioned while he had attended the school.
He started work as an office boy for a firm of shipping agents in Bouverie Street in the City.
To help channel the energies of the young after the disturbing times of the war, his parents had helped to found a youth club in Hampstead, financed by the Co-operative Society of which they were long standing members. A drama section formed with Murray its most enthusiastic member.
A short-lived job as an import and export clerk in a shipping office followed two unhappy years of National Service in the Royal Air Force (his father had served in the RAF during the Second World War). He inadvertently exported quantities of goods to destinations that had not ordered them.
He was employed as clerk and secretary to the Director of the Royal Air Force Sports Board at the Air Ministry, then in Kingsway. Knowing nothing about sport, apart from Littlewoods Pools, he considered his clean fingernails, well combed hair and his father's service had done the trick.
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Famous quotes related to early years:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)