In 1967 an article about a 32-year-old housewife from Leeds ran on the front page of The Yorkshire Post. “Mother of three swotted as she cooked,” it said, before continuing: “The next course is a college one . . . The college place she has won will mean an end — for a while at least — to learning verbs with the vegetables and grammar with the groceries.”
Antoinette Port embarked on a string of O-levels when her youngest was aged five. With two other children under ten to care for and a house to run, her hands were full. “Don’t say I did it in my spare time,” she is quoted in the paper. “You don’t have any spare time with children.”
And so Antoinette, known as Toni, rose daily at 5.30am to study French, English language and literature, Spanish and geography. “I envied my husband going out to work and meeting people,” she said. “A correspondence course in English language and literature gave me a new interest. When I went into the lounge to study it was like entering another world.”
To her chagrin Antoinette had left school at 15 without qualifications and the O-levels were her passport into the James Graham college in Leeds. Afterwards she got a position teaching French at the Leeds Morris Silman Middle School.
A cultural exchange in her teens with a Parisian, Francine, had brought with it a lifelong fascination with France and its culture — after a wartime childhood in Leeds, Paris left a strong impression on the 15-year-old — and at the Morris Silman school she went on to be head of French. She maintained her correspondence with Francine for the rest of her life.
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A calm, discreet and highly regarded teacher who prepared her pupils well for the next stage, Toni was known as Madame Port. She arrived in 1972 and stayed for 15 years. Like many teaching mothers, it suited her to work the same hours as her children — her daughter Ann was in her class for a year — and she bought her groceries in the lunch break and returned home at the same time as them.
Toni also taught drama, which she saw as an important means for children to express themselves.
It was a wrench to take retirement from the school in 1987 but for Toni there were other interests to pursue. She took a course on the Holocaust at Leicester University and gave lessons on Jewish history to adults; she also founded Theatre Express, a company that took groups of adults, many in retirement, to plays in Stratford, Newcastle, Richmond and York.
Yet it was for B’nai Brith, the Jewish fraternal organisation, that she reserved most of her energy. In the years when Toni was teaching she had taken positions on the council of the local lodge, and her engaging yet common-sense approach led to roles as vice-president and president of the lodge. In 2001 she was made the north’s regional liaison officer and for two years between 2004 and 2006 she was the national president of B’nai Brith.
Toni was born in Leeds in 1935 and had a younger brother, Jack, to whom she remained close. Her maternal grandparents had left Poland in the early part of the century and her uncles earned a living as tailors, a contributing factor to her enduring elegance. Their sister, Toni’s mother Betty (née Tillman), was a beautifully dressed figure often to be found entertaining friends and family in the tea room at Schofields, the upmarket Leeds department store.
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Toni’s father, Joseph, the unassuming counterpoint to his wife’s gregariousness, had set out to become a writer but abandoned the idea to become a civil servant. Although Toni inherited much of her father’s intellect, it was not expected that she should study beyond the age of 15. Joseph taught her Pitman shorthand and she took a typing course in Leeds.
At a dance at the Jubilee Hall when she was 15 she met Joel Port, a legal executive for a firm of solicitors who was seven years her senior. They married two months after Toni’s 18th birthday in 1953 and four years later she had her first son, David, followed by Philip and Ann. Family life was valued, as it had been for her own mother, and when Toni later studied for a BA in English, education and the humanities at the Open University it was Betty who stepped in to help out, cooking nourishing soups that recalled the food of the Polish shtetls.
As president of B’nai Brith, Toni travelled widely, including to Israel to visit Kiryat Gat, where the organisation had financed many projects, as well as to Belgrade, Berlin, Paris, Monaco and Madrid. In Brussels she gave a speech in French. By her side for much of the time was her husband, Joel, a proud and practical support who arranged the flights and booked the hotels.
Widely respected by her teaching colleagues for her professionalism, at home Toni was surprisingly funny, with an ability to mimic others and to have everyone around her in stitches.
When Joel predeceased her in 2010 she took holidays in Bournemouth, enjoyed being with her grandchildren Samuel, Saskia, Joseph, Yardena, Inbal, Bella and Taia and spent time with her sister-in-law Norma and friend Michelle. In her earlier life it was Patrick Moore and his late-night programmes on astronomy that she liked to relax in front of before summoning the energy for the round of commitments the following day.