Lives in Cricket No 52 - Schooled in Cricket (2nd edition)

66 his dog to fetch the ball so his practice would be more efficient. He had vision for others – he always wanted to pass his skills on to others and he was in every way a social and amiable person who would always help people. His vision extended to the projects which he created for himself and his family. His great craftsmanship enabled him to build a pipe-organ in the 1920s while still a teenager. This was housed when he was 20 in a local chapel in the village of Robin Hood where he had been appointed organist. (He must have built at least one more organ when he was 21!) Johnny would spend hours practising and enjoying playing music – he also played the piano and he loved all kinds of music. At home he had an electric organ – first a Hammond and then this huge £10,000 Rogers organ from the U.S.A. Everyone who heard him play or joined in his sing-songs describes someone who was accomplished and quite good enough to have been a professional but he was a family man who was quite satisfied just to share this side of his life with the extended family and with friends. More extraordinarily he built – immediately after the war – a caravan for his family by acquiring an old double-decker A man of his times who became a role model for other players A 1932 local newspaper cutting from the family album, captioned: ‘Mr John Lawrence, Ropery Cottage, Stainton-lane, Carlton, near Rothwell, at work on the organ which he is building in his home during spare time’.