Trevor Dawson

Trevor was one of our utility players having played both 1st cornet and 1st Horn and was Band Sergeant for several years as well, but sadly due to health reasons has had to sit out of the band in recent months.

Trevor says the band was full circle for him, back to where it began over 50 years ago! Same place (nearly) in the cornet back row playing some of the same music! The Fellowship Band’s repertoire currently includes what were then, in the late 1950s, new or recently published pieces. The differences are the passing of that chunk of life and the absence of father, brother, grandfathers and uncle playing in the same band in the Langsett Road Corps in Sheffield.

Trevor moved from second to first cornet, then to flugel horn, then to end of front row (but there was only one row) of the 10 strong East Finchley Band (during his three years at London University). His experience of life and the S A was greatly widened by the exposure to the bigger, wider, international Salvation Army in London, and involvement in the relatively smaller corps situation he became part of.

At the end of that course he entered the SA Training College in 1966 becoming a member of the ‘Messengers of the Faith’ Band. He met Joyce there too and they married in 1969, a year after Commissioning, serving a period of 29 years of Officership

Their appointments were Luton Leagrave, Welwyn Garden City, Eaton Bray, Harlow and Barton upon Humber. These 10 years as a corps officer provided some opportunity for playing with some of the local corps bands. The birth of 2 children early in this period provided opportunity for other playing!

In 1978 they were appointed to the International Training College staff. Work here included responsibility for 2 sessions of men cadets before a transfer to the Education Department put Trevor back into a classroom. His main responsibilities were with the post-graduate courses and maintaining the Corps Cadet study programme. Later, Joyce and Trevor had responsibility for writing and supervising a new Pastoral Ministry course. A lasting memory for Trevor is managing the suicide squad – the white-gloved team directing traffic around the college marches down Denmark Hill to Camberwell meetings. One Training Principal owes his life to their quick-thinking on the evening an ambulance tore across the march, aiming for the A and E at King’s College Hospital!

Their interest in counselling, and support for it in the SA, led to professional training and an appointment at the SA Counselling Service, of which Trevor ultimately became Director. This was a rewarding time, involving counselling, training, support and consultancy. During that period, they were soldiers at Croydon Citadel, in which band Trevor played (same place again) for 2 or 3 years.

In 1995 they resigned as officers, and Trevor found work in NHS primary care counselling, and as administrator for a professional body of counsellors and psychotherapists. Then he moved into I T training in the NHS: in south London with a team preparing GPs and staff to use a new clinical system; then in Hampshire, training and supporting surgery and hospital staff using a new electronic referral system.

That move from south London to Lee on the Solent took place in 2005 (because their daughter lives in nearby Stubbington). Now retired for a couple of years, Trevors present activities include some voluntary driving for day centres; helping with some admin tasks at their local church, and some preaching there; enjoying what the area provides in terms of theatre, music and walking; and enjoying their daughter’s family.

Trevor concludes that while it may be full circle, it’s with a different and more mature view of both life and the music he grew up with.