Aviation apprenticeship an excellent grounding

The April 2018 HEJ article looking back at IHEEM’s early history and some of its key milestones brought back memories for a former chairman of the IHEEM Publications Committee, Amos Millington, whose own NHS career began in 1965 when he started work as the Deputy Group Engineer to the Salford Hospital Management Committee, having cut his teeth engineering-wise during an apprenticeship with legendary British aviation manufacturer, de Havilland. HEJ’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, spoke to him about his engineering career, some of his most memorable experiences, and some of the interesting people he met along the way.

Now 77, and living in Manchester (he grew up in nearby Walkden), Amos Millington wrote to me at HEJ in mid-April this year to say how much he had enjoyed reading the article in that month’s issue, ‘Early engineers’ lot was not an easy one’. One significant omission from my article, however, his letter noted, had been any mention of one of the Institute’s early Secretaries, John Furness, who, with the support of his wife, ‘worked tirelessly to successfully improve the status of the Institute and its members’. Amos Millington said: “In those days, the Institute was run and managed by just two people – John Furness, and an able office assistant, Rosemary Hewitt. It was during their tenure that the Institute moved from its London base to Portsmouth, with financial benefit for the Institute, and domestic benefit for John, since, being an ex-naval man, Southsea was his domicile.” (The Institute’s) Council meetings were still held in London (with Amos Millington’s favourite location being the Royal Society of Arts). He added: “In recognition of his work as Institute Secretary, John Furness was deservedly awarded an MBE.” 

‘A driving force’