‘KEEP CALM... DON’T LOOK BACK’
Tributes to the teacher who led pupils to safety at Aberfan:
She was present at one of the bleakest moments in Welsh history. Former teacher Hettie Williams helped calmly lead her pupils to safety as the Aberfan disaster unfolded around them.
And now her brave actions that day 52 years ago have been recalled following her death this month at the age of 75.
This week, more than 500 people – including pupils from that very class – turned out to pay their respects to their former teacher at her funeral.
She died on August 3, aged 75, after suffering from a heart attack just days before she was due to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary with husband Ralph.
On Thursday, August 16, hundreds of Mrs Williams’ family, friends and former pupils packed into Saint David’s Church in Rhymney for her funeral.
During the service, the Rhymney Silurian Male Choir – conducted by Ralph – performed a heartfelt rendition of Ar Lan Y Mor, marking the mother of two’s lifelong love of the sea.
Julie Hickman, Mrs Williams’ daughter, said: “There were quite a number of children from Aberfan at the funeral.
“We had a card from someone who came to the service and said they had not spoken to her since that day. They said they remembered how professional she was and how safe they felt when she was getting them out of the school.”
Mrs Williams – then known by her maiden name, Miss Taylor – was teaching at Pantglas Junior School when disaster struck on October 21, 1966.
The 23-year-old managed to lead her class to safety after a waste tip from a nearby colliery slid down the mountainside in the mining village of Aberfan, and engulfed the school and surrounding homes, killing 144 people, 116 of them children.
That morning, Hettie Taylor had been teaching her class of pupils aged seven and eight.
After the walls of her classroom began to bulge and crack as the waste tip covered the school, the then23-year-old teacher guided her pupils from the classroom to safety.
No sooner had the class stepped onto the playground, the Rhymney teacher was asked to help identify the body of a colleague who had been killed in the disaster.
After the disaster in 1966, Hettie went on to teach at primary schools in Abertysswg, Phillipstown and Bargoed in the Rhymney Valley, taking hundreds of children under her wing until her retirement.
At that point, she took up volunteering at a cancer self-help group called Helping Hands in Rhymney, as well as looking after her three grandchildren.
Daughter Julie said: “She was just an incredibly caring person. She was always happy and loved everyone, children predominantly.
“She had her grandchildren and they took the place of her teaching when she retired. She was just an unassuming, caring person.”
One of Mrs Williams’ pupils at Pantglas, Ros Bastow, was seven years old when the disaster struck.
Speaking in 2016 to mark the 50th anniversary of the disaster, Ros said: “I was sitting there at the desk when the noise came. I think it’s the noise that everybody remembers.
“The building shook, a crack appeared across the wall behind Miss Taylor’s desk and little puffs of dust came out of the crack as it appeared.
“The lights were on very long flexes with white shades on them, they swung and jiggled from the force of it hitting.
“Outside, we could see the masonry and the debris falling. Miss Taylor just said, ‘Get under your desks, keep calm’.
“I’m not sure how long we were there, it didn’t seem that long. Miss Taylor said we were all right but the door was blocked.
“She could see a gap that we could get through.
“She said, ‘Right, now line up, I want you to leave the classroom, I want you to walk straight out to the yard, don’t look back’.”