Trevor Burke Dagg came to Trinity in 1931 to study French and English. The young lecturer, Owen Skeffington, quickly became his mentor. Trinity won the Irish Senior Hockey Cup for 1933-35, perhaps the best run for any Trinity team. On all the teams, Trevor was captain in 1934 and won three Irish caps. He left for Chile to teach at the Grange School, Santiago. There he met and married his wonderful Jean. He drove tank transporters in North Africa and Italy, attempted to educate the troops, went back to Chile for a short period before returning to become headmaster of Gloucester House. Skeffington told him that Sandford Park School, the only non denominational secondary school in the country, had been taken over by the Old Boys. In 1953 Trevor was appointed as head of the school. There were 30 boys; within a year there were 75, and the school has never looked back. Although many others have contributed, Sand ford Park is essentially his creation. His huge character dominated the school for 20 years and his influence is tangible today.
High standards were the order of the day in the classroom, on the sports field and above all in behaviour. He ran the school with a black diary, a red pen, verve and panache. He was still a brilliant hockey and cricket player. Two towering sixes. in a staff match, were hit over the long on boundary way down into the rhubarb patch at the Merton Drive end. A cosmopolitan, above all he loved France and all things French. giving Sandford a feeling for the Continent only rarefy experienced in other schools.
We looked forward to the morning assemblies, when he was carrying the Manchester Guardian - he would often address us for 20-30 minutes on blood sports, racism, bullying or some other kind of social injustice, highlighted by an article in the paper. The teachers learned as much as the boys - five went on to be headmasters, at Bandon, Masonic, Wesley and two as successors at Sandford Park.
Trevor retired in 1980. To his despair, Jean's illness worsened, and she faded away. Trevor found company and happiness at Rathdown School with Stella Mew and her staff, teaching English to the foreign pupils until 1994. Crippled with arthritis and unable to drive, he had been a teacher for just 50 years.
His later years were marked by independence, courage, loneliness, frustration and pain. He had fierce political views. Detesting the humbug of all nationalisms and religions, he wanted a new world but as the years went by his anger intensified. Noel and Iris Dagg, Valerie and Shirley, gave him every possible friendship under difficult circumstances.
Trevor and Jean could not have children. They thought of adopting, but it would have been difficult - an inveterate atheist could not have been given charge of little Irish children. The boys and girls of schools in Chile, Ireland, England and Morocco were their fortunate children. A lover of truths that few accepted. he is at rest "where fierce indignation can no longer tear his heart".