Peter Coe

Percy Newbold "Peter" Coe (27 September 1919 – 9 August 2008) was a British athletics coach, author, translator and coach of his son Sebastian Coe. Early life and education Coe was born Percy Newbold Coe in Stepney, the only child of carpenter and joiner Percy Coe (1893–1974), who had served with the East Surrey Regiment and East Kent Regiment during the First World War, and Violet, daughter of professional gambler and gymnast (part of a family music-hall tumbling act) Henry Brereton Newbold. Percy and Violet Coe were both of humble working-class origins; their grandson Sebastian Coe observed "my grandparents... barely had an education at all." Violet was from a Cockney family, and worked as a charwoman for a family in Fulham; when her employer, Gladys Minson, suggested she move closer- the Coes were then living in "one room in Whitechapel"- to reduce the daily commute, and the family's straitened circumstances were made evident, the Minson family bought the house next door and gave it to the Coes outright. They lived there for the rest of their lives. Coe had a younger brother, Peter, who died in infancy in 1928, and he took on his brother's first name as a dedication to him. He was brought up in just two rooms on Cambridge Heath Road. Although he won a scholarship to Westminster School, going there from a West London comprehensive school was a culture shock for Coe, and he shortly left after having been offered a similar scholarship for the Emanuel School in Battersea. Career Coe worked in the merchant navy at the age of 19, during the Second World War, and was on a boat named the A.D. Huff that was torpedoed by the German battle cruiser Gneisenau, leaving him as one of only five survivors. He was picked up by a German boat, and was made to work in the kitchens, because he spoke fluent German. He was to be transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp, but escaped by jumping off a train, along with a Canadian prisoner. He then walked all the way from Germany to Spain where he was imprisoned for six months. After the war, while Sebastian was still young, the family moved up to Sheffield from Middlesex, and he worked there as a production engineer in a steel cutlery factory, George Butler & Co., eventually becoming production manager. He did not begin coaching Seb until just before he turned 50, his favourite sport being cycling rather than athletics.