DAVID Arthur, who has died aged 88, was a well respected Helensburgh headmaster and a founding member of the Samaritans in Scotland.

He had first heard of the organisation’s work to combat suicide while listening to a Radio Luxembourg broadcast in the 1950s. It featured the crusade by Anglican clergyman Chad Varah to help those contemplating taking their own lives.

Soon afterwards the London-based priest appeared in a Scottish newspaper inviting anyone interested in forming a helpline to get in touch.

Arthur, a history graduate and teacher, responded, and a week later Varah rang and asked him to organise a funeral for someone who had committed suicide. A subsequent meeting with others who had also been moved to volunteer, resulted in the launch of a Samaritans telephone service in Edinburgh.

Arthur went on to devote more than 40 years to the cause, serving as its chairman and being made an MBE for his contribution.

In tandem he pursued a challenging career in teaching, worked in fund-raising for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and became a well-known figure in Helensburgh where he initially taught and returned to as headmaster.

Born in Kikuyu, Kenya, where his father was a Church of Scotland medical missionary, he began his education there at boarding school in Turi before the family returned to Scotland in 1937. He briefly attended St Trinnean’s in Edinburgh but completed most of his school years at the capital’s Loretto School.

During his studies at Edinburgh University he met his future wife Mary and they married in 1954, in the middle of his two years’ National Service. The bridegroom was stationed in Germany where he returned after the honeymoon.

His initial career plan had involved ambitions in the Foreign Office and a role as Governor in an outpost of the British Empire, a prospect put paid to when the Empire no longer existed. As a result, his vocation became teaching.

His first post was at Larchfield School, Helensburgh in 1955, followed by a move to Edinburgh’s Melville College and then to Aberdeen as head of history at Robert Gordon’s College.

From there he went as deputy headmaster to Stirling High School before becoming the first headmaster at Cumbernauld’s Greenfaulds High School which opened in 1971.

More than 20 years after he began his teaching career in the town, he returned to Helensburgh as headmaster of Lomond, a new co-educational day and boarding school formed in 1977 from the amalgamation of Larchfield and St Bride’s Schools.

Once the merger had been successfully achieved, he moved on to work organising fundraising for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, spurred into action by the experiences of friends whose children had the condition.

His desire to help others stemmed from his early life and the influence of missionary work. Although unsure if he could adopt his parents’ faith, he yearned to help humanity and the emergence of Chad Varah’s crusade to combat suicides proved the impetus.

The response to the newspaper article on Varah resulted in a meeting of like-minded readers at the RSPCC offices in Edinburgh’s Melville Street: Arthur, a rugby fanatic who had played full back for Edinburgh Wanderers from 1956 to 1962, took in a film of the Lions tour to South Africa that evening before attending the gathering that led to the establishment of the Samaritans telephone service in the city in 1959.

From then on he was heavily involved in the initiative, taking his turn on call and in 1970, along with his wife, starting the correspondence branch.

He was made an MBE in 1998 for services to the organisation and in 2009 attended a reception and exhibition in Edinburgh City Chambers marking the 50th anniversary of the Samaritans in Scotland.

Five years later Arthur, a former Helensburgh Rotary Club president and director of Helensburgh Heritage Trust, had a book, An Avenue in Time, published.

It covered the remarkable life of his father and his legacy in Kenya, his own achievements and a history of various parts of Scotland.

In it he reflected on the changes he had experienced, observing: “In my lifetime I have lived in a house with no electricity, no TV to watch, no computer. I have dipped my pen in an inkwell, had my teeth extracted without an injection, and driven a car that had running boards and flip-flop indicators.

“I have had to make arrangements with the bank manager to draw money on holiday, and yet can now take it from the machine in the wall.

“Will my grandchildren see a world which is so different for them as the one we have today?

“That is what looking back is all about, not the queens, the squires, the bankers and the politicians, but the little simple things of our own lives that have changed.”

Arthur, whose dedication undoubtedly transformed and saved lives, was predeceased by his wife and their youngest child Catriona.

He is survived by their daughters Gillian and Seonaid, five grandchildren and a great grandson.