PERCY Cambray was “one of the family” at St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Oxford.

He helped children cross the road every day as the school’s lollipop man – and knew every child’s name by heart.

He was so popular that when pupils were asked to write an essay on their favourite person, he beat the Pope by two votes!

We were reminded of Percy’s varied career when we published a picture he once supplied to the Oxford Mail of a football team called Oxford United in the 1913-4 season (Memory Lane, August 8).

He had a long association with St Joseph’s School, which he joined as crossing patrol man when he retired as a works policeman at Pressed Steel, Cowley, in 1962.

When he heard the school was moving from St Clement’s, he told Oxford education authority: “Either I go with the school or I resign.”

He had no official reply so on the day the children moved to their bright new school in Headley Way, Percy arrived too, dressed in his white coat and lollipop sign in hand.

After completing his lunch-time patrol, he would go into school, eat with the staff, then help clear up the dining hall.

Before his afternoon shift, he would make tea for the staff.

He also found time to join in singing classes – his bass voice blended well with the children’s high-pitch tones.

He once said: “When I first started the job, I thought I would be in for a rough time with so much traffic in St Clement’s. But I never had an accident on my patch.

“When the school was moving, I had to go with them. I would have given the job up if I had had to go to another school.”

When he retired as patrol man at the age of 80 in 1974, there were many tributes to him. One pupil described him as “not just a lollipop man, but a very good friend to us all.”

The school staged a This is Your Life-style concert in his honour, with headmistress Sister Lydia composing a poem tracing his life from his birth in Bicester in 1895.

He and his wife Rose, who lived in Borrowmead Road, Northway, were showered with gifts, which included an electric blanket, tobacco, chocolates, a bouquet of flowers and a basket of fruit.

A bench seat with an inscribed plaque in his memory, bought with money from relatives, friends and pupils past and present, was placed in the school courtyard.

After leaving school as a boy, Percy trained as a hairdresser. During the First World War, he served with the 6th Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in France.

He was awarded the Military Medal for carrying out a lone reconnaissance, which ended with four German soldiers surrendering to him after he shelled their trench.

During the Second World War, he was sergeant-major of the Headington and Marston Home Guard.

He also had a lifelong interest in football. He was a referee and had a long association with the Oxfordshire Thursday League, acting as its treasurer for more than 50 years.