Today we had a man called Graeme Patterson come into talk to us about the life of Scottish Olympian Eric Liddell, the primary 6/7s came in too. Graeme was really funny!
Here is some of the things we learned about Eric (what we can remember anyway)
Eric’s parents were missionaries so he and his brother grew up in a Christian household. They actually lived in China when they were really young but moved back to Scotland when the boys had to go to school. Eric was really good at sports and his brother was really good at school. After a while their dad went back to China whilst the rest of the family stayed home. When the boys were old enough the mum went to China too so the boys went to boarding school.
It was the time of World War 1 when Eric’s brother was aged to leave school, his mother was frightened that he would have to go to war. She prayed for him and when he was playing football someone tackled him and broke his leg so he couldn’t go to war as he was in hospital.
Eric was training to be a teacher and his brother trained to be a doctor.
Eric started running in the 100 metre sprint (it was called the 110 yard back then) people started to recognise him as he was really fast. He also played rugby for Scotland but he wasn’t that fussed about that, he was quite happy with his studies, the bible and running. Long story short he went to run the 100 metre sprint at the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924. (This was the first Olympic Games held after the war and the committee banned Germany from the games as they blamed them for starting the war in the first place and killing lots of innocent people)
At the games – they came with a list of the days of the races but the final of the 100 metre sprint was on a Sunday so Eric refused to run as that was his day to God. Race day came and he did not run instead they found him in Church on the Sunday reading the bible to others. He said he would run the 200m and 400m instead – he had not been training for this but he still managed to get to the finals in both. Â He won a bronze medal for the 200m. On the day of the 400m final he was handed a note that said ‘Those who honour me I will honour. Samuel 2:30) so he put this in his shorts and ran the race…which he won! Some thought it was a one man race when they were watching it.
After winning 3 medals – 1 bronze, 1 gold and 1 for taking part he decided to finish his studies, became a teacher and got married to a woman called Florence.
They decided to leave everything and go to China to tell people about god. They had 2 children with one on the way in 1942 – this was when Japan was invading china. So Eric sent his wife and children to Canada (this is where his wife came from) and Eric stayed in China alone. He kept working but 2 months later the Japanese invaded his village and he was taken prisoner and thrown into a work camp as he didn’t come from China. He wanted to help others in the camp so he set up a school for the children in the camp. Sadly he contracted a disease and died the age of 43 (21 February 1945)
There is a statue of Eric Liddell in St Andrews – its what he looked like when he crossed the finish line.
When Graeme spoke of how Eric was a Christian and how he read the bible to people. Graeme showed us the bible that he thought was the best…he flicked through and said some people think that its boring, there was nothing in it. Then he said some people think its just black and white and flicked through the book again…this time there were pictures in it!! THEN he said he thought that wasn’t true and that it was full of colour…as he flicked through the book we could see the pictures were full of colour!!!!! everyone was amazed!
He also pulled off our shoes to show an example of what Eric shoes would have been like – not like the fancy trainers Levi had on but more basic ones like the ones Lucy had on. He smelled the shoes and pulled funny faces which made us all laugh!
We loved having Graeme in and would fully recommend anyone and everyone to get him to visit their school! He really was good!
