mademms

My brother Ivan Usher, who has died aged 83, worked for 40 years as a physical education teacher, and spent the whole of his professional life at one school – Longcroft in Beverley, East Yorkshire – where he taught generations of young people to enjoy their fitness.

Ivan was born in Beverley to Roy Usher, a landscape gardener, and his wife, Florence (nee Bird), a cleaner who later became a care worker. He went to Beverley grammar school, where he excelled at sport, and left there in 1953 to do national service with the East Yorkshire Regiment, where, as a lance corporal, he directed PE lessons on his troopship on the way to service in Malaya (now Malaysia).

Once out of the army, Ivan trained as a PE teacher at Loughborough College (now Loughborough University) before joining Longcroft school in 1958. As a teacher he became involved not only in day-to-day physical education but in leading skiing trips, long walking holidays and, above all, exchange visits with pupils from the German town of Schwäbisch Hall. Thousands of young people experienced their first overseas adventure under Ivan’s leadership, and lasting friendships were forged at a time when postwar links with Germany were still tentative.

When he retired from Longcroft in 1998, Ivan immediately set up Ushers Gym in Beverley with his second wife, Hilary (nee Gilbert), also a PE teacher, whom he had met on a skiing trip and married in 1990. The gym was a huge success, not least due to Ivan’s infectious enthusiasm, and with Hilary he was fully involved in its running until his late 70s, when he reduced his activities to concentrate on working with older people to improve their fitness.

Hilary and Ivan closed the gym four years before his death, but he continued to work in hired halls, running classes for elderly people, and was still doing so until five months before he died.

Ivan is survived by Hilary, by their son, Greg, and by another son, Nick, from his first marriage, to Wendy (nee George), which ended in divorce in 1984.