Page 78 - WHO'S WHO OF DUDLEY ROTARY

10 years until the Spanish Civil War made things difficult. He therefore returned to England in
1938 and joined Metallisation, first as sales manager in London and then, from 1940, in Dudley.

240 Karl HENN (1888-1962) (Elected 16.6.1941; resigned 15.6.1953 but about
October 1955 joined the Rotary Club of Tipton as a Past Service Member.)
Classification Education Administration. He was Assistant Director of
Education and Principal of Evening Institute Education for the Borough of
Tipton from 1926 and previously principal of the Tipton Higher Elementary
School from 1923. He moved to Dudley Education Department in about
1950 where he was in charge of the South West Staffordshire Division.
He was born and raised in Dudley, son of William B Henn, one of several
members of the Henn family who were watchmakers and jewellers.
However Karl started work as a clerk in Dudley gas works whilst studying at the Technical Schools
of Dudley, Brierley Hill and Birmingham. During the First World War he served as a Corporal
(Clerk 1st Class) in the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force. On discharge he attended
Birmingham University full time where he he was awarded a Bachelor of Commerce degreee in
1921. Five years later he gained a Master’s degree with a dissertation on The Hand-made Nail
Trade of Dudley and District, and in 1927 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Economic Society.
He played chess to a high standard for Birmingham, Dudley and Tipton chess clubs, and
represented both Worcestershire and Staffordshire. (He was Staffordshire County Champion in
1937 and Worcestershire runner up in 1929.) He was actively associated with the British Legion,
and for many years was a member and Secretary of Dudley Book Society. He lived at Sedgley
Road West, Tipton.

241 Reginald Charles William WEYGANG (1899-1949) (Elected 25.8.1941; resigned 13.7.1942.)
Classification Cinema Management. He was manager of the Odeon Cinema/Theatre, Castle Hill,
Dudley but soon left the club on taking up a position, presumably also with Odeon, in
Birmingham and then in Hackney, London, where he died at the early age of 50. He was born in
Kent, son of a German paper maker, raised in Suffolk, served during the First World War with
the Royal Berkshire Regiment, and married for the first time in 1920 in Eton. He and his wife,
who was 20 years older than him, moved to central London where he was an Estate Agent. In
1925 the pair emigrated to British Columbia, Canada, with the intention of becoming residents
and farming at the tiny township of Barriere north of Kamloops. They travelled in a party of
about 50 people - families and farming students - sponsored by the Salvation Army. It appears
that his wife died in Canada, so 9 years later and now an Office Manager, he returned to England,
with an address in Nottingham. He remarried in 1941, whilst working in Dudley, but his second
wife died less than two years later.

242 William Robert EDWARDS (1892-1974) (Elected 15.9.1941; resigned 8.2.1944.) Chemical
Engineering. He was a chartered mechanical engineer and Technical Director with John
Thompson Engineering Co. of Windmill Works, Peartree Lane, Dudley. He managed the
installation of power station boiler plants although the firm also manufactured chemical plants
and industrial chimneys. He became a main board director of the parent company John
Thompson Limited. His colleague Arthur Arnold was already in the Rotary club (#234) so he
joined as an Additional Active Member. As a boy he lived at Queen’s Cross, Dudley. On leaving
school he started as a structural ironwork draughtsman, probably also with the firm John
Thompson. Although in later years he lived in Wolverhampton his grave is in the churchyard of
St Thomas’s (‘Top Church’), Dudley. During the 1930s he was secretary of the Dudley Lawn
Tennis Club.