Page 56 - WHO'S WHO OF DUDLEY ROTARY

169 Frederick Howard CROOK (1884-1968) (Elected 24.10.1932; President 1937-38; made Past
Service Member 12.12.1944 on his retirement from business.) Wholesale
Provisions Distributing. He and his older brother Percy, who withdrew
from being a founder member of the club, were directors of T W Crook &
Sons, wholesale provision merchants of Abberley Street, Dudley. The
firm was founded by their father. They joined as junior assistants on
leaving school and rose to take over the firm when their father died in
1921. However for most of his early years with the firm Howard was a
commercial traveller, visiting clients on a weekly basis. During the 1930s
he was a Director of the Dudley & District Benefit Building Society, and
closely associated with the Wesleyan Church, Dixon’s Green and the Dudley Methodist Circuit,
and also Dudley Cricket Club. He was already described as ‘retired’ from wholesale grocery in
1939 when he was only 55. He lived in St James’s Road until 1949 when he moved to
Bournemouth to spend his last years there.

170 Clifford Maurice WALKER (1906-1961) (Elected 24.10.1932; resigned 29.4.1935.) Public
Assistance Officer for the Borough of Dudley from 1929 to 1948 when he left to join the Ministry
of National Insurance. As Public Assistance officer he was responsible for payment of
unemployment benefit and for the institutional care of the elderly, infirm and mentally ill.
During the Second World War he was responsible also for providing food and shelter for persons
rendered homeless by enemy action and for evacuees. He was brought up in Edmonton, North
London.

171 Arthur William HARTLAND (1865-1948) (Elected 28.11.1932; member at 1943; died 28.9.1948.)
Teacher of Music. He was born, lived and died in Tipton but had a high reputation throughout
the Midlands as an organist and music teacher. As a boy he played the organ at Workhouse
Lane Wesleyan Church, Coseley, without music but so small he had to be lifted onto a stool to
reach the keys. By the age of 16 he was a pupil school teacher and during his 20s he taught
(presumably music) at an elementary school. Aged 30 he set up as a teacher of music on his
own account, based at home, but for many years he also taught the theory of music at the Tipton
Evening Institutes. He was organist and choirmaster at many churches, including Mount Street
Congregational Church, Tipton; Princes End Baptist Church; Mount Zion Chapel, Birmingham; St
Matthew's Church, Tipton; St John's Wednesbury; Bushbury Parish Church, and Kings Norton
Parish Church. However his most notable contribution was as organist and choirmaster at St
John’s Church, Kate’s Hill, Dudley where he served two periods of 22 years with just a brief
interval between, having to give up in 1945 only because of increasing deafness.

172 Rev. Dr Arthur Pearce SHEPHERD, DD (1886-1968) (Elected 2.1.1933; left 1.1945 on leaving the
district but made an Honorary Member; died March 1968 whilst still a
member.) His Rotary classification was ‘Sunday Schools Associations’ but
he was Vicar of St Thomas (‘Top Church’) from April 1932. He also held the
position of Archdeacon of Dudley from March 1934 to 1951, making him
responsible for administering half the parishes in the diocese. He was also
chairman of the Worcestershire and Herefordshire Association for the
Welfare of the Deaf and Dumb. He moved to Worcester on being appointed
Residentiary Canon of Worcester Cathedral at the end of 1944, a post he
held for the next 20 years.
He was born in Barbados, West Indies, into a large settled family of British colonials. However
when Arthur was small, his immediate family moved to Kidderminster where his physician father
set up a practice. After just a few years they moved to Cardiff. Arthur studied Classics at the
University of Wales, gaining 1st class honours and winning a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford,
where he obtained a BA and MA in Humanities (1910 & 1913) and was later awarded the degrees