• Dribbler Dan
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There'll be great delight in road transport and distribution circles at the news that Dan Pettit has been elected president of the Institute of Transport. Not bad going— chairman of the National Freight Corporation on January 1, president of the IoT on October 1.
Very many people know Dan in his SPD hat, his physical distribution hat and also his personnel management hat, but I wonder how many know that he also qualifies for a teacher's hat and has a sporting cap or two? With a Cambridge Honours Tripos in history and modern languages behind him, he began his career as a master at Highgate School in 1939. But he soon got swept up in the war and was only briefly back at Highgate before joining Lever Bros—the first step to SPD as it turned out—in 1948.
But going back a bit, he gained a soccer blue at Cambridge and was captain there in 1937; ten years later he was captain of'Corinthians. Way back in 1936-8 he was in the England Amateur International side and was in the Great Britain XI at the Olympic Games in 1936. It's only just now that I've learned about his sporting prowess myself; Dan's a quiet chap about his own achievements.