Trustees of the
KOHIMA Educational Trust

Graham Spearing

Graham Spearing

Graham Spearing retired in 2001 at the age of 60, after thirty-four years as a consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist.  Since then he has returned part-time to the health service as a Director of Clinical Risk Management.

Spearing was born in 1941, six weeks before his father sailed in convey from Liverpool, bound for the Far East.  He was captured in the first Arakan campaign, at Rathedaung, transferred to Rangoon Jail, where he died, essentially of starvation.

Spearing writes that he has visited Burma on many occasions “and it now feels like returning home”.  He regrets that his father never saw him succeed in life and was unable to see his grandchildren develop into fine young people.

“One of the major influences in my life,” Spearing relates, “is Charlie, third child and son number two.  Charlie is severely disabled intellectually and will never be able to live an independent life.  In an effort to give him some degree of independence and to be with his peers, in 1991 I opened Chescombe Trust as an aftercare unit in Bristol for young adults with severe learning disabilities.”  

Commenting on his role in the Kohima Educational Trust, Spearing says that education has always been a major influence in his life, and that had it not been for State Education and the Grammar School system, he would probably have been a manual worker.  

“To be in a position to encourage and influence young people to be educated and achieve something exceptional in their lives, which at first might appear impossible, is perhaps the greatest legacy one could ever offer to anyone.  The legacy for my children has been an education.”

In KET, Graham Spearing has taken a special responsibility for communications between Naga children who are awarded scholarships and their sponsors in the UK.  He himself has sponsored a pupil in Kohima, which he hopes “will prove to be a life enhancing opportunity.”