Brief Profile

Short Life Summary

Frank was the son of David Gillespie Pearson and Phyllis Salmond. Educated at Fettes and Oxford, he combined boxing rowing and running with his studies before National Service with the Cameron Highlanders. After a year teaching at Harrow, where he made a lasting impression, he came home to study law at the University of Edinburgh.

In the LLB course there, now for the first time admitting students who did not have the previously obligatory first degree, he mixed readily with those who had not had his breadth of education and experience of life. In contrast to others in his cohort of mature students entering that course who were, to be polite, condescending, he had no pretensions. Frank treated the raw students straight from school, many 10 years his junior, as equals, leading numbers of them to reappraise their prejudice against those who had seen the privileges of elitist education and the challenges of National Service.

From a family with a serious legal pedigree it was natural that he became an advocate. Though he acquired an enviable reputation in his specialisation, petroleum law, he latterly found little satisfaction in his practice. After 10 years at the bar he returned to his first love – teaching.

He spent most of his career at Truro Cathedral School where he ultimately became headmaster. Giving up his responsibilities there he applied for a post teaching at Welbeck. This Defence Sixth Form College, set up by the then Ministry of Defence to prepare students for leading roles in the military suited Frank’s view of education as a blend of the intellectual and the physical.

After a long illness he died before it closed its doors in 2021.