A PE teacher who survived the Aberfan disaster in 1966 has died aged 82.

Howell Williams, from Treharris, was just 25 when a colliery spoil tip collapsed so that waste stone and shale engulfed Pantglas Primary School.

Newly qualified as a PE teacher from Cardiff training college, Mr Williams helped many children escape by smashing open a window in his classroom, as the spoil hit.

Speaking after his death, which happened at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital on March 29, his son Jonathan Williams said his father never really got over that tragic day.

Speaking to WalesOnline, he said: “It was totally life changing. It took its toll on him. He talked about it a lot but he couldn’t come to terms with it. I think it’s such a big event in Welsh history and things like this need to be marked. In his classroom, two thirds of the children died.

“He was one of the ones who survived because he was squashed up at the back of the classroom and he smashed the window and escaped through it. He helped to free as many children as he could. But it got to him, the survivor’s guilt.”

The Aberfan disaster happened at the beginning of the school day and killed 144 people, including 116 children. Mr Williams was one of four teachers who survived the disaster, along with Mair Morgan, Hettie Williams and Rennie Williams. 

In ‘Surviving Aberfan: The People’s Story’, written by Sue Elliott, Steve Humphries and Bevan Jones, pupil Bernard Thomas told how he scrambled across his rubble-filled Pantglas Junior School classroom to escape, aged nine at the time.

“I managed to scramble across the rubble, got across to my teacher and saw one or two children trapped like, partly covered, partly buried, some quite physically hurt as well. I remember my teacher pulling at his foot and helping me out – I’ll have that memory always.

“I saw the little panes of glass at the top of the classroom door were smashed through, so he helped me out through there and across the main hall of the school.

“To the left of the classroom there was a bank of slurry and the corridor to the right was blocked by slurry. But a couple of the main windows of the hall on the Moy Road side were open so I got across to there and got out of there.”

Pupil Dilys Pope, aged 10 at the time of the disaster, previously told the South Wales Argus: “My leg got caught in a desk and I could not move and my arm was hurting. The children were lying all over the place. The teacher, Mr Williams, was also on the floor. He managed to free himself and he smashed the window in the door with a stone.

“I climbed out and went round through the hall and then out through the window. I opened the classroom window and some of the children came out that way. The teacher got some of the children out and he told us to go home.”

Mr Williams was lucky to be able to return home to his wife, Yvonne, but could never forget the events he’d witnessed. “It caught up with him in later life,” his son said. Mr Williams – who attended Quakers Yard grammar school where he passed his 11+ – continued to teach until he retired. After the Aberfan disaster, he taught for a while at the temporary school set up there before moving onto Bishop Hedley comprehensive school in Merthyr and then Goetre junior school in Gurnos.

He had a “traditional” approach to teaching and went into his career because he wanted “to give kids the best opportunity at life and in education”, his son said. Howell and Yvonne had three children together: Jonathan, born in 1969, and twins Catherine and Christopher, born in 1973.

The four Aberfan teachers remained friends, although it was Yvonne who mainly kept in touch with the others as she was friends with Hettie, Jonathan said. In 2006, 40 years after the disaster, Hettie Williams told WalesOnline: “There were five teachers and a school secretary who died there that day. It was such a happy school, the staff all got along well and the children were lovely.

“I’d come in with [Pantglas teacher] Michael Davies that morning, we had all been standing in the hallway talking with Howell Williams, who also taught there, about a staff do at Bindles in Barry the following day. Then, when the disaster happened, it all changed. The walls of my classroom were bulging and cracking, he helped me get the children out, but then while we were standing on the playground, I was asked to come and identify a body.

“They thought it might have been a senior school pupil who had got caught up in the landslide. It was a young man wearing a blazer and flannels so they thought it was a pupil. But it was Michael.”

Hettie Williams died in August 2018 and Rennie Williams died two years later in May 2020.

In 1997, the Queen returned to Aberfan where she met 80 survivors of the disaster. Among the group were a dozen survivors of the disaster, former pupils at the school and the four teachers. The Queen shook hands with and talked to each one of the 80 people present at the Aberfan community centre.

Mr Williams, then aged 56, said at the time: “I don’t think anyone has known how to cope with what happened. There was no counselling or anything like that. Individuals or groups have gone their own way.”

Howell Williams died at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital. He is survived by his three children, Jonathan, Christopher and Catherine and their families.

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