Page 93 - WHO'S WHO OF DUDLEY ROTARY

--- Harold Graves AVERY (1892-1974) (At Dec.1947 he was about to be inducted but in Jan.1948 he
reported that his business address was likely to be changed to one outside
the area of the Club, so in abeyance. It appears he never actually joined.)
Town and Country Planning Officer for the Dudley & District Joint Planning
Committee from early 1945. During 1947 and early 1948 he produced the
Outline development plan for the reconstruction of Bilston. He became
Staffordshire County Council area planning officer for South Staffordshire.
He went on to practice as an architect. He lived in Sedgley and was a
tireless worker for All Saints Church and also served as a county councillor
for Sedgley after retiring. He was a native of Yorkshire and served with
the West Yorkshire Regiment during the first world war. Prior to coming
to Dudley he was a member of the Rotary Club of Mold, Flintshire, where he was a local
government planner.

--- Rev Bernard Hugh BUTT (1908-1970) (Elected c.1.1948 but it appears that
he never actually joined.) Minister of Priory Road Baptist Church, Dudley
from June 1947 having come from Southall, Middlesex. He left in 1965 to
become General Superintendent of the West Midlands Area of the Baptist
Association. Through the 1950s and 60s he was a leading member of the
Baptist Revival Fellowship. He grew up in Romsey, Hampshire but left in
1931 to train at Rawdon College, Leeds to become a full time minister. In
1953, whilst in Dudley, the journal Dairy Industries International reported
that Hugh had helped to deliver nearly 400 bottles of milk every weekday
for a year in order to save the milk business of a bed-ridden widow and her 17 year old daughter.
The widow, Maud Guest, said Rev Butt drove the van each day except Sundays for two or three
hours, and ‘ignored deprecating remarks about the milkman with the clerical collar’. After his
stint on the round, the daughter passed her driving test and took over the deliveries.

293 Claude Samuel SHINTON (1893-1980) (Inducted 2.1948; existing Rotarian, perhaps a member of
the Rotary Club of Smethwick; resigned early 1952 on being transferred away from Dudley.)
Newly appointed as British Railways’ Goods Agent at Dudley following nationalisation of the
railways and road haulage on 1 January 1948. For the previous 10 years or so he had been an
Area Representative of the London Midland & Scottish Railway. Other than military service
during the First World War his whole working career was with the railways. He joined the
London and North Western Railway Company straight from school at the age of 14, starting as
an apprentice clerk in the Wolverhampton Goods Depot at £25 per annum. By 1915 he had
risen to be Yard Master at the depot. He then enlisted with the Royal Highlanders (8th Black
Watch) - travelling to Perth to do so - and saw action in France from June 1916. A year later he
transferred to the Royal Engineers, eventually becoming Regimental Sergeant Major. He was
born in Wolverhampton but for many years lived in the Codsall area. He was an Independent
member of Seisdon District Council, representing Codsall, for at least 25 years from 1934 and
Chairman 1948-50.

294 Stanley JENNINGS (1908-1988) (Inducted 5.4.1948; died 3.11.1988 whilst
still a member.) Automobile electrical engineering. Director, jointly with
his brother Wesley, of Fred H Jennings & Sons, specialist auto electrical
installers and repairers, of Cinder Bank, Netherton. The firm was founded
by their father, perhaps in the early 1920s. Stanley and Wesley were in
turn succeeded by Stanley’s sons Martin and Peter who kept the firm going
until it was sold out of the family in 2004. (Martin joined the Rotary club
in 1989, member #536.) Stanley lived all his life in Netherton and was
closely associated with the Wesleyan Methodist Church there. He was a