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Tributes and appreciations

Below are tributes to a number of Queen's graduates and/or former members of staff who have died. If you would like us to include details of a graduate obituary online, or in a future issue of The Graduate, please contact us via email or mail to: Development and Alumni Relations Office, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN.

Brian Maurice Adams, MB BCh BAO 1963 (1939-2009)

At school Brian played hockey on the team which won the Burney Cup in 1957 and was a keen member of the Royal Naval Section of the CCF.

Queen’s University Medical School was Brian’s destination as a Royal Navy Scholar where he represented Queen’s at golf. After qualifying as a doctor in 1963, he became a house officer in the Royal Victoria Hospital.

Subsequently he trained as a radiologist at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London as he commenced his career in the Royal Navy. In this he was following in the footsteps of his father, Admiral Maurice Adams, an ophthalmologist who was also a Queen’s graduate. It was at this time that he met and married a young Scottish physiotherapist, Fiona.

Brian’s first overseas posting was to the Royal Naval Hospital, Bighi in Malta. It was from there that Fiona and baby Richard were evacuated on the “Stork Flight” when Don Mintoff asked the British to leave.

In 1975 the Adams family were evacuated in a similar manner for Singapore. Brian became the Head of Radiology at the Royal Naval Hospital in Plymouth with the rank of Surgeon Commander.

At the age of fifty, he left the Royal Nay to join the Royal Fleet Auxiliary as a ship’s doctor. He retired in 1996 following a severe stroke (his second) from which he made a good recovery.

In retirement Brian continued to strive to play golf to his usual high standard and to tour Britain and the continent with Fiona in their caravan. He had two enjoyable visits to Northern Ireland to visit friends from his days as a medical student at Queen’s.

Brian is survived by his wife Fiona, son Richard and daughter Lindsay, and his sisters Moya Ashby and Pat Adams.

Professor Akin Adesola, Doctor of Laws 1989 (died 29 May 2010)

Akinpelu Oludele Adesola was an esteemed member of the Queen’s medical Class of 1956, when he graduated MB, BCh, BAO. By the time he left his adopted home in Northern Ireland in 1962, he had held surgical tutor posts in Queen’s, and a number of positions (house surgeon, house officer, senior house officer and surgical registrar) in the Royal Victoria Hospital. He qualified from the University again in 1961 with a Masters in surgery and was to return for a third time in 1989 to receive the ultimate academic accolade, an honorary degree from his Alma Mater.

During the intervening 25 years, Akin Adesola enjoyed an illustrious academic career in surgery at the University of Lagos, becoming successively senior lecturer, professor and head of the Department of Surgery and eventually Deputy Vice-Chancellor. From there he moved

to the University of Ilorin, also in his native Nigeria, where he served as Vice-Chancellor for a three year term before returning to the University of Lagos as its Vice-Chancellor, a position he held until his retirement in 1988.

As a highly respected academic Professor Adesola was much in demand and he held many visiting professorships in the UK, the USA and Canada and external examiner positions in Nigeria, Ghana and England.

His work for education in Nigeria and across the Commonwealth, as well as his involvement in humanitarian enterprises at home and abroad, was outstanding, and the honours he received – including the Symons Award for ‘outstanding service’ from the Association of Commonwealth Universities – were many and well earned.

Professor Adesola received the degree of Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) on 7th July 1989 in recognition of his exceptional contribution to education and his many academic achievements. In his citation, Professor J F (Sean) Fulton, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, singled out how proud the University was of the achievements of one of its own graduates, highlighting the ‘proud tradition of The Yoruba of service and leadership’ of which he said Akin Adesola was a ‘true exemplar’.

Roy Alcorn (1953 - 1957) Honours degree in History

Outside of his studies Roy’s interest was drama and as a leading light in Dramsoc he both acted and directed. In the days when Queens Festival was merely a twinkle in someone’s eye November saw the main Drama Society production mounted in the Whitla Hall. As well as playing Othello Roy directed a modern dress ‘Coriolanus’, Shaw’s ‘St Joan’ Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ and ‘King Lear’. He also worked in the Group Theatre and during the summer in Bangor’s Little Theatre which is where he met Jimmy Ellis.

He taught for a year in Ballyclare High School until invited by Jimmy Ellis to join the cast of ‘Over the Bridge’ which after six weeks in the Empire Theatre toured Dublin, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Brighton and finally the Shaftsbury Theatre in the West End. When he came back Ulster Television beckoned but after a year Roy decided he preferred teaching and directing plays. In Regent House he was the first to mount a school production of an American Musical (as opposed to Gilbert and Sullivan) when he put on ‘Annie Get Your Gun’. At Belfast Royal Academy he wrote his own musical version of ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ and his own adaptation of ‘The Orestian Trilogy’ with music by Keith Rogers.

He spent the last nineteen years of his career teaching English in Dalriada School Ballymoney producing a school play every year including a musical version of the story of Samson with music by the head girl and another musical adaptation of his own of ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’. In his leisure moments he also acted and directed for various amateur drama groups winning awards in both categories at Drama festivals round the province.

Dr Michael Allen

Dr Michael Allen, a founding member of the ‘Belfast Group’ of writers that included Seamus Heaney and Bernard MacLaverty, has died. He was 75.

Michael Allen, who was born in England and grew up in Wales, joined the English department at Queen’s University Belfast in 1965, where he worked as a senior lecturer in American and Irish literature until his retirement in 2001.

For more than 40 years, he was a vital presence in the cultural and literary life of Northern Ireland, an unassuming man who gave extensively of his time to others, and who nurtured the talents of several generations of writers and critics.

He was an original member of the ‘Belfast Group’, the writers’ forum that fostered the work, from the mid-1960s onwards, of some of Ireland’s leading poets, novelists and playwrights, among them Heaney, MacLaverty and Stewart Parker. He also taught the poets Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson and Medbh McGuckian when they were undergraduates at Queen’s.

In Preoccupations, Heaney acknowledges Michael Allen as ‘the reader over my shoulder’. At a reading in Belfast last year, Muldoon paid tribute to him as the greatest poetry critic he knew.

A close friendship with Michael Longley is beautifully captured in the poem ‘Level Pegging’ by Longley, written on the occasion of Michael Allen’s retirement from Queen’s: ‘you / Who over the decades ... have washed down / Poetry and pottage without splashing a page ... you have looked after me’.

Michael Allen was, for Longley, and for other poets, too, the first and most trusted reader, the man whose subtle and astute judgments on literature were often inspirational.

His critical essays on contemporary Irish poetry, particularly on the work of Longley, McGuckian, Heaney and Muldoon, both set the standard and opened up the way for other critics to follow him.

As the poet Leontia Flynn put it, ‘he gave me the best ideas I had’. He was a brilliant, scrupulous and warm-hearted teacher, whose generosity with his time and attention were exceptional.

He once said of himself, “I suppose when I met good poetry I was able to recognise it.” But he did much more than this.

Medbh McGuckian describes him as “the first person in my life who could really explain what a poem was”. In characteristically self-effacing fashion, he devoted much of his life to helping others recognise good poetry, too, the man-behind-the-scenes and often unsung hero to whom students, writers and friends will be forever indebted.

Michael Allen was a scholar and a gentleman, greatly admired by the many academics worldwide who have read his critical writings, much loved by those lucky enough to have known him and to have been taught by him.

His humanity, warmth, and critical intelligence have been at the heart of literary and cultural life here for four decades and his passing marks the end of an era in Northern Ireland.

He is survived by his wife, the classical scholar Maureen Alden, his two children, Catherine and Matthew, and his two grandchildren.

Michael Barnes, former Director of Queen’s Festival

(Published in The Stage Friday 16 May 2008)

Michael Barnes, the longest-serving director of the Belfast Festival at Queen’s, has died at the age of 76.

A senior lecturer in modern history at the time, Barnes assumed control of the annual event in 1973 after the departure of founder Michael Emmerson and remained in the position until 1994.

It was Barnes who transformed the festival into a major fixture in Northern Ireland’s arts calendar, expanding its size and scale to give it an internationally focused dimension. During his two decade-long tenure he brought a host of high-profile performers and ensembles to the region for the first time, among them the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Moscow State Ballet.

Between 1980 and 1994 Barnes was also artistic director of Belfast’s Grand Opera House, overseeing two major refurbishments of the venue as a result of significant bomb damage.

Arts Council chairman Rosemary Kelly said Barnes’ “presence was particularly felt during some of the city’s darkest times. We will still reap the benefit of his legacy now that Belfast is routinely included as part of the touring circuit for international artists and entertainers”.

(Details were also published in the Belfast Newsletter).

Dr Peter Baskett, MB BCh BAO, 1958 (died 18 April 2008)

(Obituary by Simon Baskett)

Dr Peter Baskett, who did his clinical at the medical school at Queens University from 1955 to 1958 died after a long illness in April this year. He went on to work as an anesthetist at Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast before moving to Bristol in 1962 where he became one of the world’s leading figures in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and pre-hospital care. In the early 1970s, he developed advanced training for ambulance personnel who were amongst the first paramedics in Europe and was also responsible for introducing premixed nitrous oxide/oxygen into the ambulance service in the United Kingdom in 1970.

He was one of the founding members of the European Resuscitation Council and was President of the Association of Anesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland from 1990 to 1992. He lectured widely across the world and personally introduced advanced life support courses in 22 countries.

Peter was a keen rugby player in his university days and was also in the medical corps of the Queens OTC . He had very fond memories of his time at Queens.

He is survived by his wife, Fiona, son Simon and daughters Lucy, Olivia and Beatrice.

For a full obituary, please visit the Times Online website.

Frederick (Derick) J Bingham, BA 1968 (died on March 6 2010 aged 63)

(An appreciation of the life of Derick Bingham by William Crawley can be found here).

From Newcastle in Co Down, the former English teacher at Lurgan College was a well respected pastor, a regular columnist in the Belfast Telegraph and a frequent contributor to the BBC Thought for the Day slot.

Derick Bingham graduated from Queen’s in 1968. During his lifetime he published 23 books, including several on the works of CS Lewis among them the 2004 biography A Shiver of Wonder. A long-time admirer of Lewis, Derick was instrumental in the creation of C S Lewis Room in the new McClay Library at Queen’s.

Mr Bingham also had a great regard for the writings and work of St Patrick and published a short book on Ireland's patron saint. He also wrote a biography (The Wild-Bird Child) of Amy Carmichael from Millisle, Co Down, who became a Christian missionary in India.
Derick was a speaker at Keswick Convention in England, conducted public Bible classes in Scotland and Northern Ireland, broadcast weekly programmes for TransWorld Radio and travelled internationally teaching and preaching. He was a teaching pastor at the CS Lewis Foundation based in Redlands, California and Adjunct Professor of English Literature at John Brown University (a private Christian university) in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.

Mr Bingham was a pastor at the Crescent Church in south Belfast, and, for upwards of 20 years during the Troubles, ran a Tuesday night service attended mostly by students from Queen's and neighbouring colleges.

Derick is survived by his wife Margaret and daughters Kerrie, Claire and Kathryn.

Professor RDC Black, DSC 1988, died December 7th, 2008

(Obituary published in Irish Times on 3 January 2009)

Professor Robert Black joined Queen’s in 1945 as assistant lecturer. In an illustrious academic career he went on to become head of the department of economics for 23 years from 1962 to 1985. He was also Dean of Faculty (1967-1970) and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (1971-75).

After his retirement in 1985 he became Emeritus Professor of Economics at Queen’s. He spent time researching and lecturing in Japan and in America, notably at Yale where he was Visiting Professor of Economics, and at Princeton, where he held the position of Rockefeller Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow. Professor Black authored or edited over 70 publications including Economic Thought and the Irish Question (Cambridge, 1960), The Economic Writings of Mountifort Longfield (New York, 1971), and Economic Theory and Policy in context: the Selected Essays of R.D. Collison Black (Aldershot, 1995).

Professor Black received a number of honorary awards, including a Fellowship from Trinity College, Dublin, and a Doctorate from Queen’s in 1988. He chaired the Committee of Inquiry into Angling in Northern Ireland, and the Commission of Inquiry into the establishment of a Wages Council in the catering industry, Northern Ireland, as well as being a member of the Industrial Court for Northern Ireland.

Professor Gordon Blair, BEng 1959 PhD 1962 DSc 1978

Published by Prof. Blair & Associates

Professor Gordon Blair died on October 21st 2010 after battling cancer for several years. He will be fondly remembered, but greatly missed, by all of his family, friends and colleagues.

Gordon Purves Blair was born in Larne County Antrim in 1937 and educated at Larne grammar School. He then went to Queen’s University Belfast to study Mechanical Engineering, where he obtained a BSc degree in 1959, a PhD in 1962 and a DSc in 1978 – this latter award is a “higher doctorate” awarded in recognition of a substantial and sustained contribution to scientific knowledge.

In 1962, having finished his PhD, Gordon Blair moved to the US where he then spent two years as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at New Mexico State University. In 1964 he returned to Queen’s University where he worked and remained until he retired early in 1996.

During his career at Queen’s University Gordon rose right through the ranks to become a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Head of Department, Dean of Engineering, and finally Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University. His published research work includes over 100 technical papers, three research text books and he was the editor of three research compilations. He also had nine patents granted. During his time in academia he also achieved many professional engineering distinctions.

Gordon Blair always had a love of motor cycles and in 1965 embarked on a journey that would not only enhance his research credentials and reputation around the world, but also that of Mechanical Engineering at Queen’s University in Belfast. That was the year he began contesting the Irish road racing scene with machines designed and built in the mechanical Engineering Department at Queen’s.

By the end of the 1960s Gordon Blair’s research work on engines had produced validated computer simulation programs which were helping design more powerful engines and providing theoretical and design insights that were giving the Queen’s University team advantages over even the biggest factory motorcycle teams! In 1969 these research and design efforts began bearing fruit when Queen’s rider Brian Steenson finishing second to the great Giacamo Agostini in the 1969 Ulster GP at Dunrod on a QUB 4-storke bike.

However Gordon knew that the future of GP racing was 2-stroke engines and his 2-stroke engine designs went on to power Queen’s rider Ray McCullough to many victories over the ensuing years, including seven Ulster Grand Prix victories to equal the greats such as Giacamo Agostini, Mike Hailwood and Stanley Woods.

1971 was a very important year for Gordon and the Queen’s team because that year they beat the works Yamaha team in the Ulster GP using a Yamaha engine which had been privately developed in the workshop and test cells at Queen’s University. Gordon Blair and the Mechanical Engineering Department at Queen’s were now on the radar of Yamaha in Japan who soon forged a technical agreement with him so that Gordon and his Queen’s colleagues would assist with the research and design of the company’s racing engines. This relationship was to continue successfully for many years.

In 1984 Professor Blair became Dean of Engineering at Queen’s and so handed over the racing mantle to his colleagues who continued to fly the banner right up to the early 2000s with continued racing successes.

There is also a long list of other visionary engine design and development projects resulting from professor Blair’s tenure at Queen’s University which are far too many to mention here.

Professor Blair retired from Queen’s University in 1996 as Professor Emeritus. Since that time to this he forged ahead with his interests in engine design and simulation. Initially he worked with the US Company Optimum Power technology to commercialise the engine design software he had developed, based on the 30 years of research carried out by himself at colleagues at Queen’s. However, he also decided to start a brand new chapter of work and educate himself in the area of engine design that he had previously had little experience and that was 4-stroke engine valve trains.

And this is where we came in. For approximately the last 14 years we have been primarily engaged in developing computer software to design engine valve trains. At Professor Blair and Associates Gordon was Senior Associate, and to date, he has succeeded in influencing the design offices of over 70 companies all around the world who use our software – he has also visited each once in turn to properly train and guide them in its use!

Many of these companies are currently involved in motorsport activities and regularly winning races, so, as our colleague and friend Hans Hermann so eloquently put it: ‘Professor there is a little bit of you in engines winning races all over the world’ – and long may it continue!

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Peter Bowen, BSc (Civil Engineering) 1963, PhD 1967 (died 13 February 2006)

(Obituary and Appreciation by Professor Adrian Long)

Dr Peter Bowen, President of NELS Consulting Inc., a consulting and testing company in St Catharines, Ontario, Canada, at the time of his death on Monday, 13 February 2006, was an engineer of rare distinction and left a permanent mark on the power industry in North America.

After graduating with an honours degree in Civil Engineering from Queen’s University Belfast in 1963, Peter spent four years carrying out research on suspension bridges for his PhD. In 1967/68 he supervised the monitoring of the stresses which developed during the construction of the walls in the new dry dock in Belfast.

In 1968, he emigrated with his wife Myra to Canada to take up a post-doctoral fellowship at the world-leading wind tunnel test facility at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. The valuable experience gained there led to his appointment as a project engineer in Niagara Falls with HG Acres, the largest firm of consultants in Canada at the time. Two years later, he and two of his colleagues from Acres set up their own business to provide modelling services primarily for power utilities in the United States.

From the early 1970s Peter built up an enviable reputation for providing services which saved power utilities enormous sums of money. Suggested changes to the geometry of the ducts from the boilers to the chimneys led to improvements to the air flow, thereby greatly reducing the amount of ash deposited (otherwise blockages would have occurred) and the frequency of costly shutdowns for servicing. Because of the enormous added value of their work, the expertise of NELS staff and Peter in particular, was in great demand, mainly in the United States and Canada, but also in Central and South America. From time to time he was also called in to solve similar problems in European power stations.

Whilst this was the main line of business of NELS, Peter never shrank from a challenge and he advised many multi-national companies such as ALCOA in relation to complex engineering problems. Through his hard work and his undoubted expertise NELS expanded to around 70 staff. In recent years he was joined in the company by his son Stephen, a mechanical engineering graduate from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. His daughter Caroline, also a mechanical engineering graduate from Queen’s University Kingston and the University of Calgary, Canada, operated a branch office in Alberta.

In mid February Peter was returning from a job in Pennsylvania, USA, when he was involved in a tragic highway accident which resulted in his sudden death. Peter will be sadly missed by his wife Myra, Caroline, Stephen and their families, including four grandchildren. His many friends in Northern Ireland from the class of 1963 in the Engineering Faculty at Queen’s tender their sincere condolences to Myra and the extended family.

The hockey community in Northern Ireland will also share in their grief, as in the 1960s he was a top class defender for Cliftonville firsts – apart from one year at Queen's when he earned a Blue.

North America owes a great debt of gratitude to Peter Bowen who contributed so much to their society.

Dr Elizabeth (Betty) Orr Bowker, (MB BCh BAO 1939) (Died August 5th 2008)

Dr Bowker (maiden name Mawhinney) was a graduate of Queen's and was a G.P. in Northampton and London. She came to live in Burton-upon-Stather in North Lincolnshire on her retirement and that of her husband, Desmond. Elizabeth enjoyed good health, although her sight and hearing deteriorated. She returned to Ireland on August 1st 2007 and lived in a residential care home in Connor, Ballymena, near to her surviving relatives. Her ashes are interred in Burton-upon-Stather churchyard with those of her husband.

Sally Boyd (nee Sarah C McManus) died February 2006

(Obituary by Margaret Haire)

Sally successfully combined a happy family life with an enterprising career in the Social Services.

As a girl from the country, she boarded at Princess Gardens School in University Street and became Head Girl. While at Queen’s from 1939 until 1942 her qualities of leadership were again recognised by being appointed as President of the Women’s Students hall, situated in Queen’s Elms. After graduation in Arts she worked in the Ministry of Home Affairs, assisting people who required re-housing following the war time air raids. Many disturbed families desperately needed help and understanding to adapt to living in new areas and Sally was an ideal person to give this support and practical help. A period in London gave her the opportunity to train as a Housing Manager and on her return to Belfast she held that position with the Northern Ireland Housing Trust. Around that time Queen’s saw the need to study Social Sciences and the late Desmond Neill pioneered the setting up of this much needed development. Sally was appointed Tutor.

After marriage to Douglas Boyd, a structural engineer, she became a full time wife and mother, together equipping their daughter and son for fulfilling careers and adult life. She always kept up her connections with Queen’s through membership of the University Association and the Queen’s Women Graduates’ Association, of which she was both Secretary and later President (1979). Through this she became actively involved with the Irish Federation of University Women and served as its Secretary. Strong friendships developed with our southern graduates which were, and continued to be, most important.

In 1980 QWGA launched the Abbeyfield Project. Sally became very involved with this, maybe because of her previous Housing experience. The idea was to sponsor an Abbeyfield House in South Belfast. Sally and her committee had the task of raising £15,000 and worked tirelessly towards this goal. Sally also liaised with Abbeyfield during this time. When the committee was dissolved in 1990 the amount raised was over £19,000, by way of lunches and other enjoyable events organised, plus bank interest earned during the time. For various reasons the plan to actually sponsor a house was no longer deemed viable and in 1990 the decision was made to use the money to provide en suite bathrooms to each resident in one of the existing houses. 23, Deramore Park was chosen and the work carried out, as well as the building of a flat for the housekeeper. It is perhaps worth noting that now, en suite facilities are the norm rather than the innovation they were then.

When her family became independent Sally returned to employment and worked in the Social Services Charity in Bryson House, during which time she courageously qualified in the new Social Work accreditation, essential to be employed as a Social Worker. She started work in the Ulster Hospital and developed an interest in helping the elderly. Before her final retirement she became the Senior Social Worker in the newly formed Unit for the Care of the Elderly in the Ulster Hospital.

Sally was always popular and good fun. She had time for people in every walk of life and always gave sound advice when it was sought. Despite several illnesses during her life and a very difficult last year, Sally faced up to her own problems with dignity and with the determination to keep going. Her Christian faith and her love of people enabled her to be the person she was.

Professor Kevin Boyle (23 May 1943 — 25 December 2010)

Kevin Boyle, an academic who stood at the centre of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, died on Christmas Day, 2010.

Emeritus professor of international human rights law at the University of Essex, he was a key player in early campaigns seeking democratic reform through peaceful means and an end to discrimination against Catholicism.

Originally from Newry, County Down, Professor Boyle was a young lecturer in law at Queen’s University when he got involved in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. His interest and commitment to human rights developed from his experience of living in Northern Ireland during the early years of the Troubles.

He served on the executive of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and as a member of the solidarity group People's Democracy that took part in the 1969 Burntollet march. The march was attacked by loyalists and the event marked a turning point in the history of the conflict. He is reported to have described the event as "a foolhardy affair".

Professor Boyle spent the first decade of his career at Queen's, before joining the National University of Ireland, Galway in 1978 as dean of the Faculty of Law.

He wrote extensively on peaceful resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict, and set up a human rights centre at the institution.
Before taking up a new post at Essex in 1989, he was the founding director of the charity Article 19, which campaigns against censorship.

Arriving in England, he founded the University of Essex's Human Rights Centre in 1990, serving as its director until 2001, and again in 2006-07.

Maurice Manning, president of the Irish Human Rights Commission, described Professor Boyle as a "persuasive and tireless voice" for human rights, and said he was one of the first academic lawyers to consider the issue.

"From his work with the civil rights movement through to his engagement with a huge number of human rights causes of domestic and international concern, a common thread of a commitment to improving the lives of ordinary people is evident," Dr Manning said.

Irish politician Michael D. Higgins, TD for Galway West, said his work had "placed so many in Ireland in his debt. Those of us who knew him personally will feel the loss of a warm friend with a great sense of humour and enormous courage."

Professor Boyle died following a long battle with cancer and is survived by his wife, Joan, and two sons.

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Mary Breslin (née O’Hare), BSc (Mechanical Engineering) 1973 (died on 30 November 2005, aged 55)

Re-appointed Chairman of the Derry Port and Harbour Commissioners in 2003, Mary set up Total Engineering in 1991 having previously worked for DuPont as its first female engineer. She was also a board member of LEDU, InterTradeIreland, Vital Voices and the Western Education and Library Board. Widely acknowledged for her business leadership skills, Mary won the European Women Entrepreneur Award in 1998 and the Business Women’s Network International Women Entrepreneur Award in 1999.

As a student at Queen’s Mary Breslin was the first female to be awarded a Northern Ireland Training Council scholarship in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. At the time (late 60s/early 70s) there were 7 NITC scholarships in Mechanical, 7 in Electrical and 1 in Aeronautical Engineering.

Mary played an active role in her local community being one of the founders of the scouts in the area and a member of the Board of Governors of several schools. She was a reader and a member of the parish council in the Holy Family Church.

In 2003 she received the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her services to business and the community in the North West.

Mary is survived by her husband Patrick (who also attended Queen’s) and sons Kevin (MSc Applied Maths, 2005), John and Peter.

Barry Bridges, former member of Queen’s staff (died January 2007)

(Panegyric by Sir Peter Froggatt given at St Ignatius Church, Carryduff 8th January 2007)

Barry was larger than life. A big man with a very big heart. Laurence Sterne, the author of Tristram Shandy also had a father who was larger than life. He wanted to portray him in his famous novel but he had to create not one but two characters, Mr Shandy and Uncle Toby, because one would have been completely inadequate.

I feel the same about Barry. In the best of all possible senses there were two Barrys, the Barry whom we all knew – doctor, teacher, researcher, sportsman, Territorial Army officer, St Johns’ Ambulance stalwart, the conscientious representative of his colleagues and the students’ willing Tribune and author of their centenary history, and the ever popular and gregarious companion.

But there was also another Barry. Like the “hidden Ireland” so beloved by the Tourist Board, the “hidden Barry” is also remarkable but known only to the family, to his confidantes, and to the more perceptive if ironically also unappreciative beneficiaries of his kindnesses. It is the Barry of the warm heart and numerous good turns; the Barry with the deep love for, and pride in, his family; the Barry of deep and instinctive pastoral care for students, the wise counsellor and the popular Warden of the student residences; and the Barry of unswerving loyalty to people and institutions no matter how humble; the Barry in whom you could place your absolute trust.

Many here will know at least the fundamentals of the “visible” Barry’s career and so I will only briefly litanies them. The scholarship to Methody. Scholarships, prizes and high honours at Queen’s. Post-graduate fellowships and consultancies in England, America and elsewhere. A valued member of the staff at Queen’s from 1954 and promoted into the most senior of the purely academic ranks which the University has to offer – the personal professorship. An active researcher, an enthusiastic teacher, and an in-house and external representative of student and staff interest, he was also involved more widely in the profession as Chairman of the local Division of the British Medical Association.

His TA career led to the peaks of an Honorary Colonelcy and as Commanding Officer of a general and field hospital, an appointment as an Honorary Physician to the Queen, and the Territorial Decoration with two Bars; while the St John’s Ambulance commitment culminated in the senior rank of Commander Brother and a Member of the Chapter of the Commandery of Ards. He won rugby “blues” at Queen’s at a time when the club regularly supplied several members of the Irish Fifteen and nearly half the Ulster one, and he was later President of the club not once, but twice.

Generating this impressive curriculum vitae is the “hidden” Barry. Barry possessed the traditional classical virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance (that is, reasonableness), justice (that is, a sense of fair play), and what was called “greatness of spirit”, in other words what we now call “a big heart” – though Barry would have been highly embarrassed if you had told him all this! He combined these with the Pauline trio of faith, hope (including optimism), and charity – that is love and compassion. These were the building blocks of his character. No wonder he was drawn to the professions of medicine and teaching.

And it was his character and the actions which flowed from it that so attracted and impressed seniors, colleagues and juniors alike. I can confirm these qualities from personal experience. For many years I knew Barry as a friend and contemporary colleague. Latterly I was his senior in the University, though “senior” only in the hierarchical sense. Some 25 or more years ago I was looking for a colleague to help me in two ambitious, and completely unremunerated, “blood, toil, tears and sweat” ventures which would greatly benefit the Medical School and the University. Barry at once volunteered – the first I must say in a very short queue! I never worked with a more obliging, industrious, tolerant and understanding colleague.

The Canada Room and much else in the north wing of the main Queen’s building is the visible result of the first venture, and several publications, an international symposium, a special issue of the Ulster Medical Journal, and Barry’s centenary history of the Belfast Medical Students Association, resulted from the second initiative; while the greater good of the University is the less tangible but real outcome of both. None of these would have been achieved without Barry who was motivated to volunteer entirely by his altruistic loyalty to Queen’s and by his instinctive desire to be of help.

Persons in authority, including University Vice-Chancellors, have many problems which are refreshed daily by the usual suspects! Mrs Thatcher famously said that Lord Young was her favourite Cabinet Minister because “while the others brought only problems to her desk, he brought solutions”. Barry always brought solutions and if he didn’t he worked long and hard to find them – and he usually did!

When Barry’s final fiendishly cruel progressive illness struck he had to face a new and highly unwelcome experience. I wondered how well the patently Christian virtues of patience, humility and long-sufferingness would be marshalled by Barry in face of this, purely, I must say, because they did not neatly fit with the classical virtues which he so evidently possessed. My concerns were groundless: Barry’s courage and love, his faith and hope, those supreme virtues, triumphed. He rarely complained; and when I last saw him shortly before Christmas, he briefly recognised me, discernibly smiled, and tried to offer his hand although he could barely move. It was a humbling but nonetheless elevating experience.

President Kennedy in his Inaugural Address in January 1961 said to his countrymen “say not what America can do for you, but what you can do for America”. And that could have been Barry: think of giving and not of taking; think of helping and not of being helped. A fitting epitaph to a good friend and loyal colleague. I will close this panegyric with my opening words – “Barry was a big man with a very big heart”.

Elsie and the family honoured me with this invitation. The burden on them of Barry’s illness and decline, especially on Elsie, must at times have been almost unbearable. That they did bear it so compassionately must stand as a prime example of love and courage hugely reciprocated.

Peter Froggatt
Former Vice-Chancellor of Queen’s University

Jason Caddies, BA 1991 (died 7 November 2005)

Jason Howard Caddies, country manager of IDC (Thailand) passed away suddenly on 7 November 2005. A longtime resident and member of Bangkok's business community, Mr Caddies was instrumental in launching IDC's operations in Thailand, and contributed to the growth of the research coverage of Thailand's IT and communications market.

He graduated from Queen's with a BA in 1991 and gained a post graduate business qualification from City University, London.

Dr John Albert Campbell Ball (1924-2008)

(Obituary by Bob Stout)

Former Consultant in Geriatric Medicine in Belfast City, Musgrave Park and Lagan Valley Hospitals (b 1924; q Belfast 1953; BSc MD FRCPEd), died from prostate cancer 22 December 2008.

Leaving school during the Second World War, Campbell Ball took a degree in engineering in Queen's University Belfast before joining the Royal Air Force as a commissioned officer and was posted to the Far East. After the war, he returned to Queen's to study medicine. In 1964 he was appointed a consultant in the Belfast City Hospital, also having beds in Musgrave Park Hospital, Belfast and Lagan Valley Hospital, Lisburn. He was responsible for the care of older patients, including home assessment visits, in a catchment area which covered West Belfast and which included some of the most troubled parts of Northern Ireland. He retired in 1984.

Campbell Ball was a warm and friendly person who was popular with colleagues and patients. He was a careful and conscientious physician and also undertook medical management duties as both Chairman of the Division of Medicine and Chairman of the Medical Executive Committee of the Belfast City Hospital. He was a multi talented person with an interest in all things mechanical, and in the arts; in his retirement he took piano lessons. He was a keen sailor and developed a passion for astronomy. Of all his interests, he spoke most fondly of the home he built on Inishbofin, a small island seven miles off the west coast of county Galway. He leaves his wife, Hilda, two sons and a grandson.

Dr Margaret Elizabeth Campbell, BSc Physiology 1964; MB BCh BAO, 1967 (died 04.10.09)

Dr Margaret Elizabeth Campbell (nee McCrory) died on October 4 2009 in Victoria, British Columbia (BC), Canada.

Born on November 24, 1941 and educated in Belfast, she obtained her medical degree from Queen's in 1967 and served her houseman's year at the Royal Victoria Hospital. In 1970, she married John and emigrated to Victoria, BC where she practiced in partnership with her husband for 34 years.

An accomplished pianist, Margaret also had a passion for her animals and her garden. She leaves a legacy of beautiful knitted sweaters with family and friends.

She will be greatly missed and never be forgotten by her devoted husband, John, and her children, Susan, Sheila (Dale) and John Patrick as well as her grandson, Ronan.

Margaret Cardwell

(published in The Guardian, London)

My husband's aunt Margaret Cardwell, who has died aged 88, was a reader in English at Queen's University Belfast. She was perhaps best known for her work with Oxford University Press on the novels of Charles Dickens. She edited the Clarendon editions of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Martin Chuzzlewit and Great Expectations. For the latter, she was awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay prize from the British Academy. Margaret spent many long hours in the British Museum reading room where she became a friend of the journalist Jean Rook, who frequented the same corner of the library.

She was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, and was educated at Fleetwood grammar school before achieving a first-class degree in English from Leeds University in 1943. She taught for a time in Blackpool before moving to Manchester, then on to London, where she studied for her MA at Westfield College (now Queen Mary, University of London).

She worked at the Froebel Institute College in Roehampton while studying for her doctorate, which she was awarded in 1969 from Bedford College. In 1967 Margaret accepted a post as a lecturer at Queen's University Belfast, where she rose to become a reader and remained until her retirement to Wellington, Somerset, in 1987.

She then spent many happy years, enjoying a daily swim in an outdoor pool from May to September until well into her 80s. Swimming was very much a part of her life. In 1954 she had been awarded a testimonial on behalf of the Royal Humane Society, for helping to save the life of a boy who was "in imminent danger of drowning in the sea at Fleetwood".

She loved watching sport, especially tennis and snooker, and we all knew better than to telephone her during play at Wimbledon or the Crucible. An animal lover all her life, she was especially fond of dogs and horses.
Margaret never married but was a beloved aunt to Valery, Richard and Peter, and her many great-nieces and nephews, who survive her. She taught most of them to swim and introduced them to the best new children's literature. She had a huge sense of fun and silliness, never forgot a birthday, and was well known for her generosity and perhaps her unusual dress sense.

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Ivo John Carré, Professor of Child Health at Queen’s University (1963-1984) and subsequently Emeritus Professor, died 16 December 2007.

(Full obituaries/appreciations by Desmond Creery and John A Dodge can be found on the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) websites).

Ivo John Carré was born in Guernsey in the Channel Islands on 20 June 1920 and received his primary and secondary schooling on the island. He studied medicine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and received his early training in paediatrics in London and Birmingham. He later spent time in teaching and research in Melbourne, Australia and in Ibadan, Nigeria.

In 1956 he became senior lecturer in child health in Belfast, and succeeded to the Nuffield chair in that department in 1963. Professor Carré had a distinguished career in paediatrics, and was known internationally for his pioneering clinical studies in the 1950s and ’60s of children with hiatus hernia and gastro-oesophageal reflux.

During his time in Belfast, he regularly spent family holidays in the west of Ireland, fishing and painting. After retiring he returned to Guernsey to maintain his 15th century family farmhouse and to research the Carré family history.
He is survived by his wife, Pamela; his son and daughter, Philip and Claire; and four grandchildren.

Dr N A J Carson MD 1963 (died 3^rd June 2007)

Nina will be remembered by many for her sporting achievements, her pioneering work in the field of medicine and as a valued friend. As anyone who had the privilege to know her can testify, she was a most determined and dedicated lady, yet utterly modest.

She was focused on a career in medical research and having qualified from Queen’s, concentrated on metabolic diseases, in particular PKU (Phenylketonuria). She was instrumental in implementing the Guthrie (heel prick) test in newborn babies in Northern Ireland resulting in early diagnosis. Through this work she identified the new disease Homocystinuria. Widely acclaimed by the international medical profession Nina was invited to lecture worldwide, was elected a member of the FRCP (Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians), and became an Honorary Member of the Society for the Inborn Errors of Metabolism.

Nina was an accomplished sportswoman. She was the National Irish Backstroke Champion for many years and was one of the first women to be elected into the Irish Swimming Hall of Fame. It was competitive swimming that brought Jim and Nina together and they married in August 1947. They went on to forma formidable team in the world of sailing. They won a large number of trophies in the Irish, UK, and European Scorpion Championships. The also excelled in Flying Fifteens, and in 1975 became the Irish National Champions. She played an active role in the swathe of improvements that happened to Carrickfergus Sailing Club in the 60’s and 70’s and eventually became the Commodore’s Lady. Finally giving up competitive sport Nina was not about to sit down and rest. At age 60 she took up skiing and golf, and age 70 tried para-sending.

For all her family however, Nina will be remembered as a devoted wife, a loving mum, and a granny who set the highest personal standards, and was great fun to be with.

Dr Edgar S Cathcart, MB BCh BAO 1955, DSc 1977 (died 4 April 2008)

(Obituary – The Wellesley Townsman, www.wickedlocal.com 10/04/08)

Wellesley - Dr Edgar S. Cathcart of Beverly, an internationally acclaimed expert on rheumatology, died Friday, April 4, 2008, peacefully at his home. He was 76. For the past 24 years Dr Cathcart had lived on Hospital Point, Beverly, overlooking the ocean.

He crossed on the SS. United States from his native Ireland 52 years ago to become an American citizen. Prior to living in Beverly he resided in Wellesley and Dedham.

Dr Cathcart earned his medical and doctorate of science degrees from Queen’s University, Belfast. He completed his residency training in the United Kingdom and Lahey Clinic Boston, followed by a rheumatology fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

A professor of medicine at Boston University from 1977 to 2003, he authored over 200 publications, delivering medical and scientific papers throughout the world. During that time he was also closely associated with arthritis programs at the Boston City and University Hospitals.

Prior to his retirement Dr Cathcart was the chief of staff at the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford. Appointed to this post in 1984, he had earlier established the first Geriatric Rheumatology Centre at the Bedford V.A.

He was a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland and a past president of the North-eastern Section of the American Rheumatology Association. He served on the board of directors of the Lupus Foundation. He was also a member of the Young Turks Independent Research Investigators.

Dr Cathcart was internationally recognized for his work on amyloid proteins. Such research has broad clinical implications, amyloid unbalance having been linked to Alzheimer’s disease and bone marrow cancer as well as chronic inflammatory disease.
As one of the principal investigators of the Sudbury Health Survey, he helped to determine the incidence of arthritis and gout in an urban population. He presented these findings internationally.

In addition to attending professional conferences, Dr Cathcart travelled extensively with family and friends; camping and tenting with his wife and four children in small towns all over Europe and the United States. Moultonborough, N.H., was among his favourite destinations.

An avid reader, he was happy to read “Pilgrim’s Progress” to his young children by candlelight, while volunteering his time as the physician on call at Outward Bound’s Hurricane Island. He delighted his grandchildren with Irish ditties and dancing.
Dr Cathcart is survived by his wife of 50 years, Geraldine (Dowd) Cathcart; his daughter Susan and husband Greg Mace of Seattle, Wash., son Charles and his wife Nellie Cathcart of Little Falls, N.J., son Alan and his wife Lucinda Cathcart of Newburyport, and daughter Heather and her husband Todd Kozan of Newburyport; 13 grandchildren; and his sister, Elizabeth Orr Isles of Tasmania. He was the son of the late Sarah and Charles Cathcart of Northern Ireland.

G F Chambers, BSc (Civil Engineering) 1938, CBE (died 6 December 2006)

George Frederick (Fred) Chambers was born in Belfast on 2 January 1918. He was educated at Methodist College, Belfast and Queen’s University, Belfast, where he obtained his BSc Degree in Civil Engineering with First Class honours in 1938. He became a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1945.

In 1937 he took a summer vacation job with R. D. Duncan and worked on survey and design for the Sydenham Bypass. After graduating he went to London Transport and worked on the widening of rail bridges and cuttings particularly on the Metropolitan line near Harrow. These works were closed down on the outbreak of war, so late in 1939 he returned to Northern Ireland and worked with Concrete Piling Ltd under I. C. Malcolmson on a new slipway bridge in the Harland & Wolff Shipyard. After that he worked with Belfast Water Commissioners under S. H. W. Middleton. One night he and two labourers crawled for about 4 hours through a 42" brick culvert at Woodburn in order to examine it and remove tree roots. Ever since then he has suffered from spasmodic back trouble.

In July 1942 he joined R. D. Duncan’s staff in the Ministry of Home Affairs and worked on roads and water and sewerage schemes. This included the recommendation of the payment of grant to local authorities for the maintenance and improvement of all classes of roads and for the restoration of damage done to roads by the armed forces. He also worked on the preliminary design of new approach roads to Belfast and on other road proposals in the Belfast area.

Early in 1944 he went to work for Sir William Halcrow and partners on the survey and preliminary design of hydra electric schemes in North West Scotland. In 1945 he returned to the Ministry of Home Affairs as chief assistant to R. D. Duncan on all aspects of roads works. His duties included the testing and discussion with local authority officials of the road proposals which were referred to in the reports of the Planning Commission "Planning proposals for the Belfast Area’ (published 1945) and "Road Communications in Northern Ireland" (1946). He also had oversight of the resumption of direct labour construction in 1947 and 1948 of the Sydcnham Bypass.

In the late 1940’s F. H. O. Fox became responsible for the Government aspects of work on trunk and local authority roads while Fred Chambers continued to have charge of the teams working on the three proposed approach roads to Belfast. When Frank Fox left in 1951, Chambers resumed responsibility for all roads matters and A. H. K. Roberts took charge of structural aspects.

When R. D. Duncan retired in September 1957, there was an open competition for the appointment of his successor and on 22 November, Fred Chambers became Chief Highway Engineer in the Ministry of Commerce. He continued as Chief Highway Engineer until he retired in March 1980, but gave up the Railway Inspector duties about 10 years earlier.

For the 22 years between 1957 and 1980 he was the key person in the implementation of the NI rural motorway programme. His own staff led by George Allen on the roads side and in turn by Alec Roberts, Leslie Clements and Corden Stevenson on the structures side, had oversight of all detail design contract documents and site supervision of the motorways and maintained close contacts with the agencies responsible for the individual schemes. The Sydenham Bypass, which was completed in 1959 was designed and supervised by his own staff.

Fred Chambers was also responsible through other staff such as Bailie Russell, Eric Boland, Ronnie Ross and Jackson McCormick for the preliminary design of all the motorways (including several which were never built) and for the government input into the reconstruction, improvement and maintenance of all trunk and local authority roads, for the roads aspects of plans for new or expanded towns and for all traffic management and traffic forecasting work. He and his staff worked closely with the senior administrative staff in the Ministry. He was personally heavily involved in the early stages of other major projects such as the new bridge across the Bann at Coleraine, the new bridge across the Foyle at Londonderry and the proposed urban motorway in Belfast.

After the reorganisation of local government in 1973 he continued as Chief Engineer at Roads Service Headquarters and was a member of the Roads Directorate with the Director Noel Prescott, and the Assstant Secretary, Dan Barry and later Jackson
McCormick.

Fred Chambers always tried to produce the best solution possible and always set high standards for his staff. He was the leader of a happy team.

He was willing to learn form others whom he met such as Ministry of Transport engineers, consulting engineers and County Surveyors from England and Scotland and from visits to works abroad . He attended many meetings of professional bodies in Northern Ireland and Britain. Early in his career he acted as Assistant Secretary in the Northern Ireland Association of the Institution of Civil Engineers and presented a paper on "Concrete Roads" to that Association in January 1949. He also spoke to the Association in 1964 and 1966 about his visits abroad. He became a member of the Institution of Municipal Engineers about 1946 and a Fellow of the Institution of Highway Engineers in 1965.

He was a keen, and well equipped 'handyman’ with an excellent knowledge of woodwork, meta1lurgy, electrical work and radio and television construction.

For many years he was a keen yachtsman and particularly liked cruising (often single handed) off the West Coast of Scotland. When he sold his yacht he bought a motor caravan in which he and his wife travelled widely.

In his younger days he was a keen tennis player. Later he took up golf for a time. His other interests includcd gardening, church matters, classical music, and photography. During World War II he was in the Auxiliary Fire Service in Belfast.

He lived with his wife, Kay, in Bangor. They have one son, a petro-geologist, and two daughters, a doctor and a science teacher.

He died on 6 December 2006.

Moya Cole (born 31 August 1918; died 16 May 2004)

(Obituary by Miss Ethel Gray)

19 September 2005

Mary Patricia (Moya) Cole was educated at Carrickfergus and Portrush Primary Schools, Coleraine High School and Methodist College, Belfast.

She graduated with a BSc in Physics from Queen’s in 1939 and gained an MSc a year later. She was on the teaching staff of Portadown College between 1941 and 1943 before returning to Queen’s where she graduated with a MB in 1948. During this time she was President of the Women’s Students Hall; President of the Student Christian Movement and President of the Students’ Representative Council.

Moya had house jobs at the Royal Victoria Hospital and Maternity Hospital between 1949 and 1950 and obtained her DRCOG in 1950. She then moved to Christie Hospital and Holt Radium Institute, Manchester, where she worked until 1983. She was a consultant in radiotherapy and oncology from 1955. Moya gained her DMRT in 1952, an MD from Queen’s in 1953, FFR in 1954 later converted to FRCR.

Moya Cole was founder of St Ann’s Hospices, Heald Green 1971 and Little Hulton 1979. After retirement from Christie’s Hospital she continued working as medical director and chair of the management committee at St Ann’s. She was awarded an OBE in 1990.

Ms Cole published many papers on carcinoma of the breast, following up the early studies initiated by Ralston Paterson. She also published significant papers on the radiotherapy of carcinoma of the cervix and was co-author of the first clinical paper on tamonifen. She also published papers on terminal care.

Moya died in Newcastle, Co Down on 16 May 2004.

JP (Paul) Connolly (died October 2004)

JP (Paul) Connolly, BEng 1999, died in October 2004. Paul was an engineer in the semi-conductor industry, and worked for Applied Materials in Munich. He went out for a run with a friend and colleague last October, collapsed and died of acute idiopathic myocarditis.

Mary Crawford, BA English Language & Literature, 1928 (died on 5 August 2007, aged 99)

(Obituary by Mrs Sheila Smyth, niece)

Mary Crawford, known as Molly, was born in Belfast in 1908. She began her education at Princess Gardens before attending Queen’s where her main subject was English. She graduated in 1928 with a BA Honours in English Language and Literature.
After her graduation, Molly became a teacher and began her working life in Coleraine. While she had a long and illustrious professional career here in Northern Ireland, she also spent some time as an exchange teacher in America.

Molly’s ambition in the field of education was fulfilled when she became head teacher at Glencairn Intermediate School in Antrim, where she was instrumental in enrolling students for the GCSE examinations.

In her leisure time, Molly enjoyed a game of golf and was also an enthusiastic bridge player. She had high moral values and worked tirelessly in the field of community relations and for the peace process.

Molly Crawford is survived by nieces in Northern Ireland and by nephews and nieces in Australia.

John Alexander Creaney, BA 1955 (died 3 June 2008)

One of Northern Ireland’s most esteemed legal figures, John Alexander Creaney, has died; he was 74.

Born in Armagh in July 1933, his father was a bus driver who served in Italy during the Second World War. John was educated at Royal School Armagh and at Queen's, where he joined the OTC. After graduation, and a spell at Trinity College Dublin, Creaney became the pupil of Basil Kelly, later Lord Justice Kelly of the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal. He was called to the Bar in 1957, and took Silk in 1973. As a Senior Prosecuting Counsel from 1978 until his death, Creaney participated in many important terrorist trials at the Belfast Crown Court.

He later served as a Deputy Lieutenant for Co Down.

For a full obituary please refer to The Daily Telegraph, 05.06.08

Claude Cronhelm, MB BCh BAO, 1957 (died 1 December 2007)

Claude died on 1 December 2007 after a brief illness. Claude leaves to mourn his loving wife Sandra; son Peter and daughter-in-law Kelly; daughters - Julie, her husband Marcus, Jackie and her husband Glen; grandchildren Matthew, Emma, Zoe, Jacob and Maya.

Claude graduated from Queen's in 1957 with a medical degree. He worked in general practice in Belfast before immigrating to Newfoundland where he worked in the Cottage Hospital System. He continued his medical training in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, where he completed his training and earned his FRCS (C) in 1963. He then moved to Vancouver and began his obstetrical career with the Seymour Clinic. In 1965 he joined Doctors Bie and Nickerson. He worked at the Vancouver General and at Woman's Hospital until he retired.

Claude was a keen amateur radio operator, sailor, genealogist and photographer. In 1976-77 he sailed to the South Pacific with his family aboard their Valiant 40 sailboat Mamateek. While living in Fiji he worked at the Suva Hospital where he taught the medical students obstetrics and gynaecology.

Claude is dearly missed by family and friends for his joyous spirit, humanity, humour and sense of adventure.

Dr Alfred Frazer Crook (MD - Queen's, FRCS - Edinburgh, DMRT - Oncology, London)

Dr Crook passed away peacefully at the Carleton Place and District Memorial Hospital on Friday 28 April, 2006 at the age of 89. Loving husband of Alice and father of Ann (Michael Berry), John (Janey), Brian and Tim, and stepfather of Drew Allen (Sue). Cherished grandfather of Frazer and Edward Berry, Gerry and Michael Crook, and Hadden and Derek Allen. He was also predeceased by his first wife Audrey White.

Captain Crook served in World War II as a member of the Royal Medical Army Corp. He served in North Africa and Italy, where he was wounded. From 1959 to 1981 he was Head of the Cancer Clinic at the old General Hospital and of the new Clinic, which he helped design and establish at the present Smythe Road campus. During these years he was also an occasional lecturer at the University of Ottawa. He retired from the practice of medicine in 1985, and in 1989 he was recognized for his 50 years of service.

Professor Sir Bernard Crossland

Queen’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Gregson has paid tribute to one of the University’s most distinguished former members of staff, eminent engineer Professor Sir Bernard Crossland, who died on Monday 17th January. He was 87.

A former Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University, where he was Head of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from 1959 to 1982, Sir Bernard enjoyed an international reputation as a research pioneer in high pressure engineering and explosive welding.

He was best known for his role as an expert investigator of national accidents, and as a powerful advocate of strong integration between industry and education.

As an engineering educator and leader whose career spanned seven decades, Sir Bernard served at the highest levels within Queen’s and the engineering profession, and he did so with distinction.

Sir Bernard was once described in the Sunday Times as one of the engineers ‘who have enriched our lives quite as much as all the actors and artists, writers and musicians who are household names’.

He served as an expert investigator of several tragic accidents, the most noteworthy of which was the King's Cross Underground Fire in 1987, heading up the scientific committee which established the cause of the fire and made recommendations to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.

He also chaired the Public Hearing following the Bilsthorpe Colliery roof fall in 1993, and played an active role in investigation of the Ramsgate walkway collapse, the destruction of a major liquid gas plant in Qatar, the Southall high speed train crash and the Ladbroke Grove rail crash.

Professor Crossland has lectured and published extensively throughout his career, and published his memoirs, “The Anatomy of an Engineer”, in 2006.

He served on and chaired several Government Committees in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and received many awards in recognition of his service to his profession and to higher education.

These include the Kelvin Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Dickenson Medal of the Newcomen Society, the James Watt International Gold Medal of the IMechE, the Cunningham Medal of the Royal Irish Academy, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Engineers Ireland and, with others, the George Stephenson Research Prize and the Hawksley Gold Medal of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Sir Bernard was a Fellow (and former Vice-President) of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers from 1986 to 1987.

In 1987 he was made a Freeman of the City of London, the city of his birth, and in 1990 he was knighted for services to education and industry. In June 2009 he was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Sustained Achievement Award.

Engineers Ireland established the annual Sir Bernard Crossland Symposium, the annual Sir Bernard Crossland Lecture and the Crossland Medal for Engineering Innovation in Sir Bernard’s honour, to celebrate and promote excellence in engineering.

Iolo ab Ithel (Iol) Davies BPharm (London) MSc, PhD, MRPharmS, MPSNI, CBiol, MIBiol, FRSM

(Obituary by Muriel Singleton , Eileen Scott, John Swanton, Jeff Millership and Paul Collier)

It was with very deep regret that colleagues and friends learned of the sudden and unexpected death of Iol Davies on the 13th January 2009. Best remembered in pharmacy circles as a well-respected academic pharmacist, he was without doubt a person of many talents.

Iol Davies was awarded a BPharm degree in 1960, passed the Pharmaceutical Society’s Qualifying Examination (PhC) in the same year and registered with the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. Teaching and some locum work as a pharmacist preceded his subsequent research studies in Biochemistry at the University of Manchester where he completed a Masters Degree in 1965. Following this he spent a year at Purdue University, Indiana, USA where he undertook research with Dr. Dalby and Professor Mertz before returning to Manchester to undertake research leading to his PhD on Lysosome Membranes which he completed in 1969. Iolo was a Research Fellow at Liverpool University prior to taking up his appointment in 1970 as a lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry at Leicester Polytechnic. He transferred to the School of Pharmacy at Queen’s University, Belfast in 1979 where he remained until his retirement in 1998.

Within the School of Pharmacy Iol’s teaching interests were the biochemical/immunological aspects of pharmaceutical chemistry. His approach to lecturing was always to challenge students to think for themselves and to take responsibility for their own learning. His aim was to encourage students to develop an interest and enthusiasm in the subject similar to his own.

Iol’s research interests included tumour immunology which commenced initially in his post doctorate period working with Dr. R. Augustin at the Immunology Cancer Research Unit in the Nuffield Wing of the Medical School of Liverpool University. This research interest continued throughout his career. His other major interest was in pain management control including the use of focused ultrasound. This work led to the award of a Royal Society Grant enabling collaborative work to be undertaken with the N.N. Andreev Acoustical Institute in Moscow. His research interests led to a range of publications and he contributed chapters to a number of books.

In 1985 he was rewarded with a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Iol’s contribution to research often went beyond his own topic through his willingness to give advice and support to anyone who knocked on his office door.

While at Queens in Belfast he was an active participant in many aspects of University life including service on the University Safety Committee, Academic Council, as a member of the Staff Common Room Committee and he was actively involved in the then Association of University Teachers (AUT).

Iol was an inveterate writer of letters as evidenced by his letters to The Guardian and to Nature and of course he contributed with great frequency to the letters page of the Pharmaceutical Journal. All of his writings reflected his passion for science and in particular, pharmacy.

True to his Welsh roots, Iol spoke the language fluently and was a member of the Northern Ireland Welsh Society. He was a keen follower of rugby, and had an abundance of musical talents. In fact, it was through a mutual love of music that Iol met his wife Mary. When he came to Queens, he joined a number of choral and instrumental groups both inside and outside the university. For the past 20 years he played the violin with the Studio Symphony Orchestra and participated in several music groups, playing a range of instruments.

In addition to his academic and musical talents Iol also found time to pursue many sporting hobbies. He was formerly a league squash player and avid mountaineer, scaling many of the challenging climbs throughout the British Isles, laterally he played golf, sailed and was a regular hill walker. However his greatest sporting interest was skiing which he thoroughly enjoyed. In fact he had been looking forward to his next trip to the slopes with his wife Mary in early February of this year.

Following his retirement from academic life Iol pursued many interests, he was a keen gardener, and a “green man” long before it became fashionable! He was still active in pharmacy through his locum work in community pharmacy. Iol maintained contact with colleagues in the School of Pharmacy at Queens and was the social co-ordinator for what he termed the “Ex-Lecs Group”. He organised the monthly lunches for the group and it is their intention to carry on the tradition in Iol’s memory.

Iol was widely known, much loved and respected and always a true gentleman. We will remember him for his warmth, kindness, friendliness, well balanced temperament and his dry sense of humour.

He will be greatly missed by colleagues, former students (both undergraduate and postgraduate), family and all his friends.

To his wife Mary and the family circle we extend our sincere sympathy in their loss.

Esther Davis, MB BCh BAO 1943 (died 5th April 2011)

Queen’s Alumna Esther Davis, died 5th April, 2011 at the age of 91 years. She graduated MB BCh BAO in 1943 and, after some time in general practice in Portadown went as a missionary doctor to Nigeria with the Qua Iboe Mission (now Mission Africa) in 1948. For a period of 50 years she was involved in medical work in various hospitals, specialising in the care and treatment of leprosy. She became quite an authority in the disease and was awarded study fellowships by the World Health Organisation to acquire new skills at centres in India and Ethiopia. On her return to Portadown she was awarded the O.B.E. for services in the treatment of leprosy. In a busy and active retirement she continued her interest in and commitment to her former colleagues and patients and paid regular return visits to the Ekpene Obum Hospital until a few years ago.

Alan Stirling Dickinson BSc Applied Mathematics (died 31 August 2010)

BSc Applied Mathematics 1964, PhD in Theoretical Atomic Physics 1967, died on 31 August 2010, aged 66.

Alan was born in Dublin, where his father worked for the Ulster Bank. As his father was transferred around the country, Alan received his secondary education first at the Christian Brothers school in Westport and then at Dungannon Royal School. At Queen’s he was awarded a 1st Class Honours BSc and the prize for the top student in Applied Mathematics in 1964. He gained his PhD in Queen's Applied Mathematics Department.

He then spent a year at the Theoretical Chemistry Institute, University of Wisconsin and returned to Queen's for a short time as Assistant Lecturer before being appointed Lecturer at the University of Stirling. In 1976 he moved to the University of Newcastle where he progressed to become Professor of Theoretical Atomic Physics from 1991 until his retirement in 2008. Although for most of this time he was Newcastle's only theoretical atomic physicist, he developed a network of collaborators around the world, tackling a wide range of problems from first principles.

Sadly both his mother and her father had multiple sclerosis (MS), which prompted Alan to volunteer with the MS Society. He was Honorary Treasurer of his local branch for nearly 28 years. He gave crystal clear financial advice and on non-financial matters his humanity shone through: he always showed a feel for what would really benefit the individual with MS.

Tributes can be found at: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/asdickinson.

He is survived by his wife, Heather (née Knox), their two daughters and his brother, David.

Joan D Donaldson, PhD 1973, BSc (Hons)

Joan D Donaldson, Died on 21^st of October 2007 in Edinburgh after a short illness.

Joan was awarded a PhD when working in the Department of Surgery at QUB whilst her late husband, Ian, was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. After retiring in 1985 they both travelled and lived abroad for a number of years before finally settling outside Edinburgh.

Michael Desmond P Donovan, BSc Hons (Economics) 1959 (died July 2002)

(Obituary by Jim Horgan, fellow student and friend)

Desmond Donovan graduated from Queen’s University in 1959 in Economics and immigrated to Nigeria where he devoted his life to teaching mathematics in schools throughout the country. He earned a high reputation as a teacher and is no doubt remembered with appreciation by countless Nigerian students. He died there in July 2002.

Anne Duffield Paris, MB BCh BAO 1956

Dr Anne Duffield (age 80), born in Belfast, May 27, 1931. Died peacefully at home in Vancouver, British Columbia August 3, 2011. Graduate of Queen's University (Belfast) Medical School, Dr. Duffield specialized in anaesthesia. She was the only child of Max and Brigid Duffield. Dr. Duffield is survived by her husband Dr. Charles Paris four children Max Paris (Jean Beard), Andre Paris, Deborah Paris and Eugenie Porter (Chris Porter) and six grandchildren Kurtis Paris-Foody, Duffield Paris, Bradley Porter, Edward Paris, Marcus Porter and Alice Paris. Dr. Duffield was blessed with a hand that healed the sick, a tongue that skewered the foolish and a profound love for all those who she held dear.

Obituary

Dr Dorothy Eagleson Phd 1958, MA 1948, BA 1946 (died August 2010)

Dorothy Eagleson

(obituary by Margaret Donaghey, Queen’s Women Graduates)

It is with sadness that I have undertaken to record something of what Dorothy has contributed to the Queen’s Women Graduates’ Association (QWGA). Sadness because Dorothy will not see our tribute nor realise the high regard in which she was held.

Dorothy left Richmond Lodge to study at Queen’s, where she followed her primary degree by further study which led to the award of a Doctorate.

Membership of QWGA meant that Dorothy never really left Queen’s. Committed as she was throughout her career to the need for educational guidance and information on education and training opportunities for men and women over the age of nineteen, it is easy to understand her enthusiasm for the QWGA Scholarship for mature women, normally over the age of 25, returning to education and enrolled on a Queen’s University award-bearing course. She gave out leaflets at Open Evenings in Queen’s, placed leaflets in libraries and Post Offices, and in particular, liaised with the Educational Guidance Service for Adults (ESGA) to promote the scholarship as widely as possible. When interviewing potential candidates she liked to enquire how they learned about the QWG scholarship so that publicity could be successfully targeted. Dorothy served until her death on the QWG Scholarships Sub-committee.

It was through Dorothy and her great friend Clare MacMahon that the Scholarship Sub-Committee was invited to administer the Millennium Award on behalf of the Lifelong Learning Trust. The task was to find nut more than three women studying at Queen’s, to share over £1000.

A prolific supporter of charities Dorothy was drawn to the Virginia Gildersleeve International Fund (VGIF) which seeks to improve the lives of women and children in underdeveloped countries. On learning of Dorothy’s death, Fay Kittleson (VGIF) wrote to honor Baird:

‘I am so sorry to hear of Dorothy’s passing last week. What a loss for her friends in the Irish Federation and also for VGIF. Dorothy became a contributing member of VGIF in 1993 and gave loyally and generously, with her last contribution coming just this past March’.

A huge interest of Dorothy was the promotion of literacy for adults. Without literacy skills, men and women could not return to education. She was delighted when in 1975, the BBC produced the ‘On the Move’ programme which adults could ring to be referred to local literacy organisers who would like to make arrangements for their learning. In October of 1975 when the first programme was due to be broadcast Dorothy believed the demand would be overwhelming and sought the help of fellow members of the QWGA to answer incoming calls and record details of each potential leaner and volunteer tutor. She had a continuing interest in this work serving on co-ordinating bodies which promoted literacy e.g. The Adult Literacy and Basic Education Committee.

Dorothy took a close interest in the production of the Annual Report of the QWGA. June Meenagh-Smartt writes, ‘when I edited the Annual Report Dorothy was of invaluable help. She was a meticulous proof reader and no spelling mistake or wandering comma ever escaped her.’

It is obvious to me as I write this tribute that the different interests I have highlighted are not separate. They are lined by Dorothy’s desire to improve the lot of the disadvantaged adults whether at Queen’s, in Northern Ireland generally, or worldwide through the Virginia Gidersleeve International Fund. She valued her connections at Queen’s with fellow graduates who benefited from her wide experience, goodwill and encouragement.

A tribute to Dorothy Eagleson

(obituary by Oonagh Johnston, Former Convenor of QWGA Scholarship sub-committee And QWGA President in 1996)

Dr Dorothy Eagleson was a staunch advocate for Adult Education and was involved in the Educational Guidance Service of Northern Ireland. She was also chair of the National Association for Educational Guidance for Adults and took an active part in the European Year of Lifelong Learning, The National Year of Reading, Literacy Campaigns, and the Forum for Community Education.

As a member of the Queen’s Women Graduates’ Association, she pin-pointed the need for a helping hand to Mature Women students endeavouring to enter Queen’s after leaving school with little or no qualification.

Dorothy was a founder member of the QWGA Scholarship sub-committee which took three years of negotiations with the Academic Council, Legal and Financial experts and Social Services to name but a few, in order to set up a scholarship within the parameters required. The first scholarships were awarded in 1996 and have continued since that time.

Those members of committee over the years were privileged to serve with Dorothy who was so enthusiastic about the scholarship and happy to give guidance and advice when asked. She will be missed.

Dorothy was involved also in the Association for Recurrent Education; the aims of which were to propound the need for Lifelong Learning. When this was wound-up finally the remaining funds were given to assist adult learners in Northern Ireland. Dorothy immediately thought of establishing a Millennium Scholarship and that task would be undertaken by the QWGA sub-committee – quite an honour for the hard working members.

Dorothy worked tirelessly to improve the lot of those who had lost out on formal education in their early years and endeavoured to give them a second chance.

She certainly took to heart the motto of the Belfast Coat-of-Arms

‘pro tanto quid retribuamus’

And gave back so much more in return for her own education.

A suitable memorial for such a crusader.

Robert Ferguson MB BCh BAO, 1959 (died on 10th February 2010 at Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA)

(Obituary by J. Stephen Garvin (MB 1959)

Bob left the family farm in Fermanagh to join the Royal Navy in 1943. As soon as he was old enough he applied to join the Fleet Air Arm as a pilot. He trained in Canada and spent the last few months of the war flying fighter aircraft from carriers in the Pacific.

After the war he took a degree in geology at Trinity College, Dublin and worked for several years on the copper mines of Northern Rhodesia. He became interested in a career in medicine and saved enough money to put himself through medical school.

After graduating from Queen’s he worked at Belfast City Hospital and at the South Tyrone Hospital in Dungannon. He then moved to Boston, USA, where he served on the staff of the Veterans Administration Hospital and later the Northeastern University Student Health Service.

Members of the class of 1959 will have fond memories of Bob's lively participation in all student activities at Queen's. His extra maturity and experience enriched the lives of his fellow students and his unwavering principles set an example for others to follow.

He is survived by his wife Esther.

James Francis Flannery, MB BCh BAO (died 20 June 2005)

James Francis Flannery, MB BCh BAO 1957, FRCS died suddenly on June 20, 2005, aged 71 in London. James was registrar at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast before being appointed consultant surgeon at Guy’s Hospital, London; he also had a private practice in Harley Street. He enjoyed retirement for the past 11 years.

Survived by his wife Audrey, James was the oldest brother of Queen’s graduates Kevin (deceased) and Raymond Flannery.

Rhoda Fox (Nee Kennedy), BSc (died 22 September 2006)

(Obituary and Appreciation by Elizabeth Miller, QWG President)

It is with great regret that we record the death of Rhoda, a long standing member of the Queen's Women Graduates which she served as Secretary in 2002. She died on 22nd September 2006, after a long illness bravely borne. She will be greatly missed by her many friends.

Rhoda was born on 14th November 1925 and was educated with her sisters May (now Willans) and Isobel (now Crooks) at The Hall, Monkstown, Co. Dublin. She loved all sports, playing for the school in hockey, lacrosse and tennis, achieving interprovincial level at lacrosse.

She was also a good scholar, entering the Science Faculty in QUB in 1942 at the tender age of seventeen and graduating with a BSc in Zoology in 1945.

During this time she met Howard Fox, a civil engineer, and they married shortly after graduation. Their first child, Olivia, was born in Belfast before they decamped to Singapore where David and John were born. They both enjoyed life in Singapore and after leaving always kept in touch with friends they had made there. In 1958 as the children got older, the decision was made to return to Belfast to enable them to be educated at Methodist College. They built their home in Bladon Drive in 1960 where Rhoda devoted her time to being a full time mother. She loved the garden they designed there together and she and the family played golf at Malone Golf Club where Rhoda served as Ladies Captain in 1993. She also played bridge and bowls and was keenly interested in the Ulster Orchestra, attending their concerts regularly. Lately she had taken up guitar and computer classes. Rhoda was a member of the Women's Club and as recently as 1999 served as their President.

She was widowed in 1984, and subsequently moved to Marlborough Park which served as a base for her varied interests. As well as those activities already mentioned, Rhoda travelled internationally on a number of occasions, visiting Canada, Scandinavia, Italy, South Africa and, of course, Singapore, together with trips to see her family. Many of these trips were taken with Olivia, who settled in Barcelona where she still lives with her three children. David moved to Johannesburg in S. Africa and John now lives in Bath and has two children.

We offer our sincere condolences to the family circle.

Herbert William Gallagher (1917 - 2007)

(Obituary by Dr Hume Logan)

After attending Methodist College, Belfast, Herbert Gallagher went up to Queen’s to study medicine, graduating in 1939. He immediately volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps, being called for service in 1940. On his way to England the ship on which he was travelling struck a mine outside Liverpool. He tended the injured before the ship sank and was widely praised for his efforts.

Herbert’s war service took him to Egypt and India where he worked on surgical units and he married the sister who worked on the same unit. It was at this time that he decided to make surgery his career and on demobilisation he trained in the Belfast City Hospital, becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1946. After inauguration of the National Health Service he became a Consultant at Banbridge Hospital, later moving to Newtownards Hospital.

Herbert was one of the founder members of the Ulster Surgical Club and later was President of the Ulster Medical Society. He was a member of the Royal Academy of Medicine, Ireland and was made a Fellow of the College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1976. He retired in 1977 aged sixty. Not being one to lead an indolent life he became an Alliance Party Councillor and a founding member of Comber Probus Club which he attended till shortly before his death (due to a carcinoma of the oesophagus). His wife predeceased him by many years but before doing so she introduced him to embroidery in which he took a great interest competing and exhibiting. He also took an interest in several philanthropic organisations.

Dr John Edward Galway, MD MB BCh BAO BAgr (died 6 May 2012)

Published by the Portadown Times

A FORMER hospital consultant, who brought the first and only diving recompression chamber to Northern Ireland, has died peacefully after a long period of illness.

Dr John Edgar Galway, who was born in 1936, enjoyed a very distinguished career as a consultant anaesthetist at Craigavon Area Hospital; he worked in the Intensive Care Unit and, with a colleague, set up the Pain Clinic.

He introduced the first recompression chamber to the province. Located at Craigavon Area Hospital, it is still the only one in Northern Ireland and treats divers who have suffered the ‘bends’ or decompression sickness.

Dr Galway, who lived in Derryhale, also played an active role in his local community, setting up Derryhale Residents’ Association which he chaired for many years, and taking great pride in maintaining the area and cultivating a community spirit.

Born in Belfast, he moved to a farm in Comber when he was four years old. He attended Cabin Hill Prep School in Belfast and then moved on to Campbell College where he excelled at rugby, twice earning a place in the School’s Cup final team.

In 1955 he went to Greenmount Agricultural College and then on to Queen’s University Belfast where he graduated in Agriculture. Having initially thought he was not clever enough to study medicine as he had no Latin, he subsequently found out he did not require the subject and successfully applied to study medicine.

He began his degree in 1959 at Queen’s University, Belfast and graduated in 1965. Following several years of study and work in the Royal Victoria Hospital and Belfast City Hospital in anaesthetics he applied for a consultant’s post in the new Craigavon Area Hospital.

During his time as a medical student he met his future wife Norma, who was a nurse in the Royal Victoria Hospital. They married in the little church in Queen’s University in December 1964 and moved to Portadown in 1972.

Dr Galway, a father of two, had many interests including running, windsurfing, scuba diving and squash although his true love went back to his roots in agriculture as he was an exceptional gardener.

A ‘Renaissance man’, he was able to turn his hand to anything from anaesthetics to building patios and wood stores.
He took a great interest in local affairs and, as well as setting up the local residents’ association, he was heavily involved in various charities.

Dr Galway died peacefully at home after an extended period of illness. He is survived by Norma, his wife of over 46 years, and his children Neil and Kim.

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Alexander (Lex) Gilmour, BSc, MSc, PhD (died 13 March 2006)

(Obituary - Henley Standard)

A resident of Henley with his family since 1980, Alexander Gilmour was born in County Antrim in 1930. Encouraged by his parents to pursue his flair for learning, he attended Queen's University, and this resulted in the award of degrees of BSc, MSc and PhD in Chemistry. After leaving Queen's in 1956, an initial posting at Short Bros. provided him with an opportunity to develop technology that is now ubiquitous in black box flight recorders.

During this employment Lex met his much loved future wife Miriam. A move to the British Oxygen Corporation in 1961 led to a subsequent transfer to the Perival offices in Middlesex in 1962. This was the same year that Lex and Miriam married and set up their first family home in Kew Gardens, Surrey.

In 1966, his appointment to European engineering manager at the rapidly expanding manufacturers of Duracell batteries, Mallory Batteries Incorporated, enabled Lex to maximise his highly creative capacity for inventive work. During his 15 years at this group, his pre-eminent work on heart pacemaker cells, Concorde flight deck systems and electrical power equipment for Apollo space-craft modules were amongst some of his achievements. His most easily recognised invention was developed in the early 1970s with his design of the rectangular shaped 9 Volt 'PP3' battery which is still widely used.

In 1980 he moved to British Ever Ready Electric Company (BEREC). When Hanson Trust bought BEREC, Lex was part of a consortium of four individuals who led a management byout of the Oxfordshire operation that was subsequently re-named Venture Technology Ltd. When this was bought by Dowty Aerospace in 1987, Lex set up his own battery consultancy called Lexcel Technology Ltd, which he ran successfully for 19 years.

Lex's interest outside work were gardening, DIY and overseas travelling. Above all, he was immensely devoted to his much loved family. He is greatly missed by Miriam and his three children Susan, Debbie and Robin.

John Caldwell Basil Glass - President of the Queen's University Association 1996-97 (died 4 October 2005)

(Obituary from the Methodist Newsletter, November 2005)

At the time of the formation of the New Ulster Movement in February 1969 Basil Glass was already a household name in the legal profession.Its purpose was to promote moderation and non-sectarianism in politics.At that meeting Basil and Oliver Napier were elected its joint Treasurers.That was the start of his political career.He brought to politics the same qualities for which he was known as a solicitor, total commitment, dependability, passion and hard work.

When a year later the Alliance Party was formed, Basil was deeply involved in its launch and became its first Chairman.Basil was older than the majority of the members – in his early 40s – and he was a kind of father figure.Chairman was his ideal role – calm, polite, meticulous, firm and decisive.It was a position he excelled in.In those early days the task of organising the party was enormous and the work fell heavily on the Chairman – and Basil was working by day in his law office and by night for the Alliance, setting up branches east of the Bann and west of the Bann.After his year as Chairman he became party President in 1973.In that year he was elected for South Belfast to the Northern Ireland Assembly.He became party Chief Whip.The Alliance negotiating team both in Stormont Castle talks and at Sunningdale consisted of Basil, Oliver Napier and the late Bob Cooper and they were a formidable team.

Those negotiations in the autumn and winter of 1979 were part of history.First were the talks between Alliance, SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party on the formation of a future power sharing administration.Basil was a magnificent negotiator – polite by very firm.He genuinely liked his political opponents but he was not prepared to sell his own position short and in spite of enormous political differences of background and culture – agreement was reached.To no small extent this was due to Basil.We then went to Sunningdale where the two governments joined the negotiations.Basil was again deeply involved in the negotiations. Again agreement was reached after days of tough and continuous negotiation.

Basil represented his constituents with the same passion and commitment which he showed in everything he did.On one occasion in the Markets area of Belfast as extremely irate lady was dressing down a young English Army officer for alleged damage when her home had been searched.She shouted, ‘I am not letting this go, I will bring it to the highest in the land.’The young officer said, ‘Oh no – not Basil Glass again.’

After the Power Sharing Executive fell under the violence and intimidation of the UVF and the UDA – while the then British government and the Mother of Parliaments sat back and did nothing, Basil continued to work day in and day out for his constituents.In 1975 when elections took place for a Constitutional Convention Basil was not only elected again in South Belfast but he brought Jim Hendron in also as his running mate.He served also as a Councillor in the Belfast City Council from 1977 to 1981.

When Bob Cooper resigned as Deputy Leader in 1976 to take up the new post as Chair of the Fair Employment Agency, Basil became the party’s Deputy Leader.

In 1987 he was appointed Bankruptcy and Companies Master of the High Court – in effect the Judge sitting in virtually all insolvency cases.And what a Judge he became.It brought out all his virtues; dignity because he felt that administration of the law should be dignified.No-one ever went into Basil’s court and felt humiliated and no-one ever left without feeling that at least they had a fair hearing, even if they did not like the decision.

He was the son of a Methodist minister and very often it showed.He believed that he had a personal responsibility to fight the wrongs of the world – at least those within his own orbit – and a crusader against what he considered to be wrong he certainly was.No effort to right such wrongs was ever a waste of time to Basil even if at the end he did not succeed.

So who was Basil? A man who set himself the highest standards and who expected others to do the same.A passionate advocate of the just society.Above all a man who cared deeply about everything he did.And of course, as many of you know, a wonderful friend with a wry and self-effacing sense of humour.An affectionate and deeply caring husband, father and grandfather.He was not proud of himself but he was almost childishly proud of Mary and so intensely proud of his four sons and his two stepsons, seeking the path of justice in every facet of life.Basil was a very great man.

Just before he died he was talking to the Rev Harold Good about his role in the recent decommissioning of IRA arms to which Harold was a witness.Basil said that he was so glad to have lived to see the day when all republican arms were put beyond use.Harold said, ‘Basil, I was only at the finishing of what you started’.

Basil Glass was born 21 April 1926.He died 30 September 2005.

Max Goldstrom, lecturer/senior lecturer and former member of Senate (died on June 4, 2009, aged 80)

(Appreciation by Liam Kennedy School of History & Anthropology speaking at the funeral ceremony at Roselawn Crematorium, Belfast, on Tuesday 9th June 2009. Obituary also published in The Times).

Friends of Max and Lorna

[It’s actually hard to say the one name without the other, and that is telling us something.]

And friends of the larger family of Ben, Rachel, Lisa and Madeline.

I want to say a little bit about Max’s life and the colleague and friend I knew over many years [gosh, it’s more than a quarter century]. In a sense, Max had two lives, in two very different cultural settings. Indeed for those of us who knew him during his illnesses in recent years, he seemed, like the Kilkenny cat, to have nine lives. Max’s long fight with ill health is a tribute to his fighting spirit – a lifelong characteristic – and perhaps even more so a tribute to Lorna’s near-heroic devotion to nursing him in his last years.

Historians like to begin at the beginning, so let’s go back to the spring of 1929. Joachim Maximilian Goldstrom was the eldest child of a German couple, born in Marienburg in Ostprossen [East Prussia], a German enclave surrounded by Polish territory. His father served in the German army during the First World War and had been awarded the Iron Cross for bravery.

The family had a drapery shop in the town, and Max can recall his father’s anger when the Nazis stood at the entrance, intimidating would-be shoppers. Incredulous and angry, he shouted at them, “When you were in your nappies I was on the western front.” Like so many Germans of the Jewish faith he was learning that his identity was no longer that of a member of the German nation. He and his family were outcasts, war hero or not.

Schooling as well as business changed radically under the Nazis. Max recalls being bullied, being called “a dirty Jew”, children being marched round the school yard singing patriotic songs (like a scene from the film Cabaret), following the flag, learning the Nazi salute, imitating the SA, the German stormtroopers.

As the clouds darkened over central and eastern Europe in the late 1930s, the Goldstrom family had to make a heart-rending choice, to try to get one of their children to safety. In 1938, aged 10, Max was placed on the children’s refugee train, the kindertransport, with England as the destination. Max had only a few days to prepare for a future he didn’t understand. The night before leaving, he was allowed to sleep in his mother’s bed. She packed his suitcase with sweets for the trip.

The family who remained behind, mother, father, five brothers and sisters, were consumed in the Holocaust, though Max was not to know this for many years.

England was another world . Initially the children were looked after in an agricultural college – and old workhouse building – near Ipswich. Max was in the company of lots of other of children there, sleeping in dormitories and given lessons in English and farm work. I can’t somehow see Max as a future farm worker.

Later during the war Max was moved to a Jewish hostel in Leeds. But he was beginning to show signs of that independence of mind that we later knew. In the hostel it was drummed into him, and the others, that he was Jewish. He was expected to wear a yamulke (skull cap). Max hated this. On fasting days, Yom Kippur, he and some other boys would sneak off and buy food, subverting the hostel regime. He read Biggles stories avidly and dodged going to the synagogue as much as possible. Part of this youthful rebellion took the form of seeking out non-Jewish friends, even members of what we once coyly referred to as the ‘opposite sex’.

Let me telescope Max’s early years in England: he left school soon after his 14^th year, took up a trade, becoming a typewriter mechanic, attended night classes, and eventually got a scholarship to study History at Birmingham. He was astonished that Britain wd give a university scholarship to a recent immigrant. This was in part the source of Max’s Anglophilia, an appreciation of English society and its values, and the opportunities if offered, even to an outsider. Max went on to qualify as a teacher, and later took a PhD in Economic History.

He met Lorna, his future wife, at what he described as a left-wing friend’s wedding. Lorna had been to Nottingham University and was a young teacher in Birmingham at the beginning of the 1960s. They met again at the New Left Club in Birmingham and were involved, as I understand it, in one or two early CND marches. Those were the days of duffle coats and long scarves, and love on a small salary. The more orthodox members of the Jewish community in Birmingham did not approve of Max marrying out, no doubt hastening his movement down the road of humanism.

Max’s appointment as a lecturer in Queen’s in the mid ‘60s must have involved a certain amount of culture shock for both Lorna and himelf. The first reference to a public controversy I can find hints at this. This, btw, was before he became a campaigner for the liberalisation of abortion legislation in Northern Ireland – a less than popular cause, as you can imagine. Max was also an early supporter of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, before it descended into ethnic nationalist conflict. This particular story, however, revolves round a bikini rather than a banner.

Max’s 17 year old sister-in-law – Lorna’s younger sister Susan – was visiting them in Belfast. She’d gone to the Ormeau Baths to have a swim but created something of a sensation by appearing in a two-piece swim suit. She was ejected by the Manager, a Mr Robert Young acc to the local newspapers, who observed that “bikinis created embarrassment and were totally inadequate cover for swimming”.

Max wasn’t one to let matters lie. Writing to the Newsletter, he recounted the “rather embarrassing experience” of his sister in law, and then added, tongue in cheek:

“I sometimes tell my students, half jokingly, that Ulster is fascinating to a historian in its resemblance to life in mid-19^th century England. Now, thanks to the Baths Dept, I have an excellent illustration.

Seriously, though, I wonder if Belfast Corporation can be persuaded to take a brave plunge into the twentieth century!”

But it wasn’t only his Irish neighbours who were outraged by the liberalising atmosphere of the 1960s.

In the field of academic history Max developed a new course on Victorian social history, which, amongst other things, touched on Victorian sexuality. Two of his more senior, English-born male colleagues, worried that this might offend the external examiner and sought to have a question on Victorian sexuality suppressed. There followed what Max jokingly described as a kind of “kangaroo court” within the Dept of Economic & Social History. Max was not to be moved and rested his case on the principle of academic freedom. He prevailed. Within a few years of course the history of sexuality formed part of the mainstream of British and American social history.

Max was an early contributor to the upsurge in British social history that was apparent in the 1970s and the 1980s. His first book, The Social Content of Education, 1808-1870: A Study of the Working Class School Reader in England and Ireland, was published in 1972. This spanned the two islands and was an important contribution to educational history and social history more generally. In the same year he published a sources book relating to the history of elementary education.

Max was also contributing articles and essays, my favourite being his Thomas Davis lecture “The Industrialization of the North-East”, later published in a seminal collection of essays, The Formation of the Irish Economy. It is a fine, pioneering piece of work that I think stands the test of time.

In the early 1980s he was the enterprising spirit behind a collection of essays in honour of the first professor of economic and social history at QUB, KH Connell, and, a decade later, of the collective volume, Mapping the Great Irish Famine.

By the middle of the 1980s, however, it was apparent that Max’s creative energies were increasingly finding their way into trade union activity, within the AUT. Many, many colleagues have reason to be grateful for his advice, support and untiring activity on behalf of his colleagues, within a system that was increasingly managerially driven.

I have good reason to be personally grateful. In the early 1990s I was involved in one of my “save the world” campaigns. It had to do with two adolescents on the run from an IRA “punishment” squad, who sought refuge in Newry Cathedral. (The cathedral turned out to be a rather “cold house” but that’s another story.) Anyhow, we desperately needed cash, so I came up with this wheeze: why not write to everyone in Queen’s, using the internal mail system, appealing for funds? Unfortunately, we over-reached ourselves, sending out almost a thousand letters, and including emeritus professors, some of whom were dead at this stage. The Univ authorities noticed this unusual traffic and impounded the letters. I was summoned to a meeting with Denis Wilson, one of the top administrators and a fine man. Max came along to support me. Max immediately went on the offensive, accusing the University of tampering with the mail of a member of staff – a serious offence under some obscure legislation – and demanded not only that the letters be delivered at once but that the Univ sh apologise for its actions. Max had his way on both counts, and I must admit by the end of the meeting I was feeling rather sorry for the discomfited Univ representatives.

There is probably a connection here, in terms of energy, to Max’s academic entrepreneurial activities. He was the pioneering voice behind the historical data base projects within the Dept of E&SH, and he was one of the first in these islands to recognise the revolutionary potential of the new technoligy - Optical Character Recognition - in digitising masses of data. Max had an innovative and original eye: in relation to digitisation, for instance, he was years ahead of most academic colleagues and even commercial interests in the field. His reward, as I recall, was to be edged off the historical database cttte, once we had adopted his ideas. But then Max was generous with his time and his thoughts.

We know of Max as teacher, writer, academic entrepreneur and negotiator. We know of him also as father, husband and family man. His great friend, Alun Davies reminds me of the Golstrom home as the House of Hospitality. But there is one further aspect to the man that I cannot omit. It is his natural gentleness and courtesy to friends and acquaintances. This is something that was particularly striking in his later years.

Irene from Barcelona, whom Max had helped in a fair employment case, put it like this at the weekend:

“Max was so gentle. He will always be alive in our hearts.”

Another friend, Lucia, emailing from Italy:

“This is so sad for everybody who loves Max, and many people love him. He was so gentle, kind and generous.”

I think that says it.

Thank you for being here.

Robert Vivian Gotto, died 16 April 2006

Robert Vivian Gotto, known to generations of Queen’s students as Viv, was himself a student in Queen’s in the 1940s. His connection with Queen’s however went further back than this. At the age of eleven he could have been found helping Queen’s Emeritus Professor of Zoology T Gregg Wilson search for mosquito larvae in areas around Belfast. At the same age Vivian joined the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club – his membership was proposed by the celebrated photographer R.J. Welch. Viv matriculated to Queen’s in 1940 and first met Gwyneth (née Jones) in the Zoology Department in autumn 1940. At this stage the Department was housed at the north end of the front façade of the Lanyon Building. Some account of these days and other days is given in Viv’s book Footprints in the Sea (Ballyhay Books 2004).

Viv and Gwyneth were both on a Zoology Easter Vacation field course in Portaferry in 1941 when German aircraft flew overhead on their way to bomb Belfast. Viv was in the ARP and his experiences wardening as the raids on Belfast continued that May probably contributed to him joining the RAF in 1943 having completed his general degree. He was posted to do meteorology initially in Paddington but from thence eventually to the Indian Ocean Cocos Keeling Islands and later to Ceylon. In 1946 Queen’s petitioned for his release - which was duly granted - they wanted a temporary assistant lecturer to join Gwyneth who had been released from the RAF and was already on the Zoology Department staff. First there was the little matter of completing his honours degree. Viv was awarded a first class honours degree plus the distinction of Highly Recommended (regardless of whether the statute books allowed such a thing). His first appointment to Queen’s was as a temporary assistant lecturer, dismissable at the end of any term, salary £100 per annum payable in arrears. He and Gwyneth spent their honeymoon helping George Williams run the 1947 Zoology Department Easter Vacation course in Portaferry.

Viv duly became a lecturer, senior lecturer and then reader in Zoology in 1980. He gained his D.Sc. in 1964. He was a brilliant and entertaining lecturer – gusts of laughter coming from the zoology lecture theatre meant Vivian had highlighted one of his lecture points with an anecdote or outrageous pun. Apart from lecturing on vertebrates and invertebrates, he ran superb practicals and for many years was the mainstay of marine vacation courses in Portaferry. His research work centred on the small copepods living in association with other marine invertebrates especially sea-squirts. His contributions to science included over sixty journal papers concerning their descriptions (including five new species), ecology, behaviour and fine structure. In 1993 he authored the standard key to these strange animals and was regarded as the leading international authority on them. Three such creatures have been given the specific name gottoi in his honour. Viv did not have the supply of research students the quality of his work merited nevertheless he successfully supervised a number of students in marine, terrestrial and freshwater topics – the latter including his son David.

In addition to his distinguished career in zoology, Vivian was a tennis player of international standing. He was a member of the Irish Davis Cup team from 1953-61 actually captaining it on thirteen occasions. He played in five Wimbledon Championships and, in 1953, held both the Irish Hardcourt singles and doubles championship.

Viv was a great raconteur and both a distinguished zoologist and sportsman. At the time of his death he was Captain of the Windsor Tennis Club in Belfast and still held an honorary research fellowship in the School of Biological Sciences. He was a lifelong ambassador for the University and will be greatly missed.

Dr Nora Graham (died 19 August 2007)

(Obituary - Canadian Medical Association Journal 26/02/08)

Graham, Nora Catherine, St Albert, Alberta; Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1976, family medicine and psychiatry. Died 19 August 2007, aged 56. After practising for many years as a family physician in Wadena and Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and Digby, Nova Scotia, Dr Graham obtained her fellowship in psychiatry in 1993, and subsequently practiced in Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Edmonton, Alberta. She was predeceased by her eldest son, Kenneth Matthew, in 2007, and is survived by her husband, Dr Kenneth T A Graham and children, Alice, Lisa, Donald and Mark. “She was widely read and a witty raconteur.”

Michael Grant, former Vice-Chancellor of Queen's (died 4 October 2004)

The former Vice-Chancellor of Queen’s, Michael Grant died on 4 October 2004. The following obituary has been taken (and amended as appropriate) from the Daily Telegraph. Other details are extracted from Degrees of Excellence – The Story of Queen’s Belfast 1845-1995, by Brian Walker and Alf McCreary.

Professor Michael Grant, who died on Monday 4 October aged 89, was a don at Cambridge, Professor of Humanity (Latin) at Edinburgh, and vice-chancellor at the Universities of Khartoum and Queen's, Belfast, but was best known as a prolific populariser of ancient history who published nearly 50 books on the Greeks, Romans and early Christianity.

Queen’s

From 1959 until 1966, Grant served as vice-chancellor of Queen's University, Belfast, where his dealings with Stormont and with the divisions between Catholic and Protestant students gradually led him to the view that Britain should withdraw from Northern Ireland (though it was not a sentiment he voiced until long after his retirement).

A contemporary of Grant’s noted at the time: Grant was a distinguished international scholar in his own right. At Queen’s he was keen to conduct his research, and this caused resentment from some Professors who had done little research and were being shown the way by the Vice-Chancellor!’

He was described by the Belfast telegraph as ‘a classicist with a modern outlook’ and was a charming and sensitive man, well-liked at Queen’s, though not generally regarded as a tough leader and administrator. His years at Queen’s were essentially a period of transition.

Classic writer

Grant was always a lucid and erudite writer, who took the view that a study of the classical world was both "infinitely worth studying in its own right, without any consideration of modern analogies" and also that "without Latin, people are handicapped because they do not understand their past, and cannot therefore effectively plan their futures".

This attitude did nothing to impede his range, nor his appeal to the ordinary reader as well as the academic professional. As well as scholarly publications on the coinage of Rome (he was a distinguished numismatist), he produced biographies of Julius Caesar, Nero, Herod, Cleopatra, Jesus, St Peter and St Paul; accounts of the literature, history, art, mythology and social life of Greece and Rome; and found time to examine the Middle Ages and ancient Israel.

Books such as The Twelve Caesars (1975) and Gladiators (which was reissued recently after Ridley Scott's film) sold well in Penguin editions and enabled him to boast of a position as "one of the very few freelances in the field of ancient history" and, for the last 30 years or so, to work from his home in Italy.

The first of his general surveys, Ancient History (1952), and its companion Roman Literature (1954) immediately made clear his gifts of clarity and scholarship. Myths of the Greeks and Romans appeared in 1962, was twice updated, and was followed by Roman Myths . The Climax of Rome (1968) dealt with the neglected period of Rome after the second century AD; The Ancient Historians (1970) summarised the development - the invention, almost - of history; The Army of the Caesars (1974), The Twelve Caesars and The Roman Emperors (1985) covered the rule and supremacy of Rome.

But there was scarcely an aspect of ancient life which did not receive Grant's attention: The History of Rome (1978); The Jews in the Roman World (1973); Art in the Roman Empire (1995); The Classical Greeks (1989); The Hellenistic Greeks (1990) and many more were ground out by his pen.

Life and times

Michael Grant was born in London on November 21 1914, the only son of Colonel Maurice Grant, who had served in the Boer War and later wrote part of its official history, before covering the Balkan Wars for the Daily Mail and rising to become an obituarist - though he was sacked for failing to get up in the night to update Kitchener's obituary in 1916. His mother Muriel was of Danish stock, and descended from Jorgen Jorgensen, who staged an unsuccessful coup in Iceland in 1809.

After day school in Queen's Gate, young Michael went on to prep school at The Grange, Surrey, where he found conditions Spartan, before going to Harrow, where he captained his house at cricket and spent three years in the Classical Sixth form, being taught by the headmaster, Dr (later Sir Cyril) Norwood, and E V C Plumptre.

The latter was a precise figure. When discussing the novel Quo Vadis - which took its title from the reputed words of the resurrected Christ to St Peter - he commented: "A classical Roman would have said Quo Is. What a pity that our Lord spoke such late and inferior Latin." Grant also made visits to Rome's ancient sights, which made an immense impact on him.

He went up to Trinity, Cambridge, in 1933, where he wasted his first year, but buckled down after failing to be shortlisted for a scholarship. Having won a slew of awards and graduated, he compiled a thesis as a research student (later published as From Imperium to Auctoritas ), and travelled widely - aware that the impending war would soon make that impossible. In 1938, Grant was duly elected a Fellow of Trinity.

But then, as Grant noted in his autobiography My First Eighty Years (1994): "There was a singularly unpleasant war on in 1939-45 and . . . the Army seemed the right place to be in." Within a fortnight of the outbreak of war, he was in uniform, having met a brigadier from Military Intelligence. Grant spent his last evening at Cambridge with a friend "whose elder brother was soon afterwards shot dead at Catterick, when he returned to camp after dinner and forgot the password".

He trained with Anthony Blunt, who went into MI 5 ("a most unsuitable job, as it turned out, to give to him") and then worked beside David Niven as a duty officer at the War Office, where he was once compelled to rouse the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Lord Ironside, to tell him of the invasion of Norway and Denmark. He opened his call with the day's codeword, "Viking", to be greeted with the answer: "What the hell are you talking about?"

Grant was transferred to France, where he had the embarrassing task of organising "nocturnal amusements" for his commanding officer and, exhausted, the next day, lunched with the Duke of Windsor, who - to the commanding officer's horror - wore suede shoes.

He was then transferred to the British Council in Turkey, where he got to know "Cicero", the German spy who was valet to the British ambassador, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen. Grant attributed Cicero's success to his rudeness, which meant no one suspected him. Grant himself succeeded (by eating a packet of butter before going out to meet ministers) in keeping up with demanding Turkish drinking habits, though not in persuading the country to join the allies. He also got his friend the historian Steven Runciman his first job, at Ankara University.

Grant the academic

After the war, Grant and his Swedish wife Anne-Sophie, whom he had met and married in Turkey, returned to England, and after a period continuing his work for the British Council, returned briefly to Cambridge, where he supervised students on Athenian history while Bertrand Russell, who shared the room, relaxed before dinner. But he almost immediately accepted a post at Edinburgh University, where he remained until 1959. Grant relished his time there, though he found that the citizens, despite his name, would not accept him as Scottish because of his patrician demeanour and English background.

He also became a figure of suspicion after taking some students to Rome, where he bought them a drink and took them to the church of San Pietro in Vincoli - thus, in their view, attempting to seduce them with both alcohol and Papist idolatory. He received some teasing for once wearing an overcoat beneath his gown to guard against the cold.

Between 1956 and 1958, Grant took a sabbatical to become first vice-chancellor of the University of Khartoum, which he enjoyed, though arguments over "Sudanisation" and the Suez crisis did much to make his life there tiresome. He later regretted the restrictions imposed on the university by fundamentalist Islam, and the failures of Sudan's government.

Italy

In 1966, after his resignation from Queen’s, and encouraged by the experience of the journalist and MP Vernon Bartlett, Grant and his wife moved to Italy, where he bought a 16th-century house from Paolo Rossi, the Minister for Education. It was situated near Lucca, where Pompey, Crassus and Caesar met in 56 BC to hammer out differences which had grown up during the First Triumvirate; it was also convenient for Etruscan remains and for the amphitheatre (dating from 79-95 AD) nearby. From his book-lined study there, Grant continued to turn out numerous works, and also to travel widely, until ill health compelled him to return to England in his last months.

He received many academic awards and prizes from numismatic societies. His Who's Who in Classical Mythology (with John Hazel, 1973) won the Prima Latina. His most recent book was Sick Caesars (2000). He was president of the Virgil Society (1963-66) and of the Classical Association (1978-9). His club was the Athenaeum. He received the OBE in 1946 and was advanced to CBE in 1958.

Michael Grant married, in 1944, Anne-Sophie Beskow, whose father raised the first Swedish volunteers to aid the Finns in the Winter War against the Soviet Union. She, and their two sons, survive him.

Samuel George Hanna, died 1 April 2006

Samuel George Hanna, BA, Dip Ed, MA - Samuel (Sam) was a keen member of Queen’s Boat Club and was awarded the University Rowing Colours (1949 – 1951).

He graduated with a BA in 1951, and after completing his Diploma in Education the following year, entered the teaching profession. He was appointed the Vice-Principal of Ballymena Secondary School in 1961 at the age of 32. His MA thesis in 1964 on The Origin and Nature of the Gracehill Moravian Settlement was published in The Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society, Pennsylvania.

At the age of 39, Sam was appointed Principal of the newly built Cullybackey High School, overseeing its opening in 1968. He led and managed its growth to one of the largest schools in the North Eastern Education and Library Board, with a reputation for excellent standards and outcomes, teaching and learning and management and leadership. He retired in 1988 after 20 years as the Principal.

In retirement Sam could focus on his main interests; family, gardening, financial markets, The Daily Telegraph and a bi-annual holiday. He maintained a keen interest in Queen’s through his membership of the Queen’s Graduates’ Association.

Sam was devoted to his family. He was a much loved husband to Kathleen, Dad to Samuel and Richard, and Granda to Cathleen, Patricia, Owen, Richard and Matthew. Sam will be greatly missed by friends and family.

James Hawthorne, BA 1951 (died 7 September 2006)

(Appreciation by John Cullen, Belfast)

My first contact with James Hawthorne was through a grey Le Velocette which silently sped past the top of Knockvale Park twice each day like an alien from an outer planet. The mysterious rider, my childhood hero, was soon to be revealed as none other than an outstanding teacher and public servant, the remarkable James Hawthorne.

Shortly after my arrival at Sullivan Upper in 1953 I noticed that the Velocette had been replaced by a beautiful Ford special in British racing green. James Hawthorne had a commanding knowledge of many subjects including Geography, Algebra and Geometry. He was patient, just and compassionate with an excellent sense of humour. In certain classrooms the floors were of polished timber in which slippers were required wearing. One day my slippers were not to be found in the cloakroom and I foolhardily and rather self-righteously proceeded to class in my shoes. James Hawthorne, with his eagle eye, soon detected the infringement and immediately called me to book. I was perfectly convinced of the propriety of my actions and proceeded to justify myself. The conversion was as follows:

'Cullen, why are you wearing shoes in the classroom? You know perfectly well that slippers must be worn in 4a.’
'But sir I have nothing else to wear. My slippers have been taken from my locker.'
‘Do you think this gives you any right to wear shoes in 4a?’
'Yes sir.’
‘Then take them off!’

It was like the Wisdom of Solomon in a nutshell and I have never forgotten it.

I last saw James Hawthorne about three years ago. I was walking down Malone Road opposite Methodist College one bright Spring morning when out of the blue I heard the mellifluous tones of an instantly recognisable voice that I had not heard in over forty years. It was James Hawthorne. Sleep well dear friend and counsellor.

(For a full obituary by David McKittrick, please visit The Independant website).

Garth Heron, BA History 1971 (died in August 2008, aged 59)

Garth Heron was born in Belfast in 1949, the youngest of six children. He was raised in Northern Ireland on a farm by his Royal Ulster Constabulary parents, his father being head constable and his mother the first WPC in the force.

Garth was educated at Friends' School, Lisburn and graduated in History and Politics at Queen’s before moving to Scotland to take a postgraduate degree in Human Resources Management at Strathclyde University. It was at there that he met Louise, his future wife, and they were married in 1977.

After an early career in banking and manufacturing, Garth was appointed Compensation Manager for Honeywell’s factories in Scotland. He later became Personnel Director of Honeywell UK Ltd, overseeing continuing changes as the company reacted to increasing global competition. After a short spell at United Distillers he set up Garth Heron Search and Consultancy in 1995.

His interests included sport (Tottenham Hotspur and Wigan Rugby League), days at the races, family cinema trips, golfing and gardening.

(A full obituary by David Miller was published in The Scotsman).

Father Michael Hurley (died 15 April 2011)

The death has taken place in Dublin of the prominent champion of harmony among Christians, Father Michael Hurley.

A co-founder of the Irish School of Ecumenics, he was 87 years old.

In 1981, during the inter-communal violence that accompanied the republican hunger strikes, Fr Hurley conceived the idea of an ecumenical community of Catholics and Protestants living together in Northern Ireland.

In 1983 he co-founded the Columbanus Community of Reconciliation in the Antrim Road in north Belfast. He lived and worked there for ten years.

He has written extensively on the subject of ecumenism.

A native of Ardmore in Co Waterford, he was educated in University College Dublin and Egenhoven-Louvain, before completing his doctorate in theology in the Gregorian University in Rome.

He received an honorary doctorate from Queen's University Belfast in 1993, and from Trinity College Dublin in 1995.

In recent years he lived with the Jesuit community in Milltown Park in south Dublin.

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Ted Johnston, BSc (Physics) 1933, MSc 1934, PhD 1938 (died 28 December 2006)

(Obituary and Appreciation by Dr Brian Johnston)

Ted Johnston was born in Belfast in 1911. He attended Belmont Boys' School and RBAI where he was granted scholarships that allowed him to study at Queen's University.

Ted graduated from Queen's with a BSc in Physics in 1933 and then an MSc in 1934. In 1938 he was awarded a PhD by Bristol University.

Ted's first job in 1938 was at The National Physical Laboratory studying the electrical currents developed in thuderstorms using Barrage balloons. In 1941 he transferred to the Radio Department to work on microwave radar which was then moved to the Telecommunication Research Establishment (TRE) Malvern in 1943, where he met his future wife Stella.

In 1946 He joined Dr HWB Skinner to get the research laboratories at Harwell established which became the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) in 1954. In 1947 Ted organised the first scientific conference to be held at Harwell, and after two years with the Electromagnetic Separator Group he moved to head the Physics Group of the Isotope Division. In 1951 Ted was asked to set up the Isotope School at Harwell. In 1954 he acted as Scientific Secretary to the second International Radioisotope Conference held in Oxford attended by 800 delegates form 30 countries.

When the Atomic Energy Authority was established in 1954 Ted moved to the Scientific Administration Division. Harwell was then the jewel in the crown of Government Science, and one of his roles was to look after visits from dignitaries which included the Queen and Winston Churchill.

In 1957 he was placed as Special Assistant to the Head of Health Physics Division and he continued in this work until he retired in 1976.

After his retirement Ted was a well known and respected figure in Abingdon. He and Stella (whom he married in 1946) were pillars of St Nicolas' Church and have done virtually every job there, from delivering the church magazines to befriending members of the congregation.

In 2006 Ted and Stella marked their 60th wedding anniversary, and Ted celebrated his 95th birthday with a family gathering on 15th December.

Ted enjoyed the company of his wife, children and grandchildren, and had a wry sense of humour. He kept his mental faculties to the end and enjoyed a good conversation even when his deteriorating eyesight made it impossible for him to read and was hear of hearing. Ted died peacefully on 28 December 2006. He is survived by his wife Stella, daughter Patricia, sons Brian and Peter, and five grandchildren.

He will be missed by many for his loving spirit and generous personality.

Rosaleen Jones, BA (Italian) 1989

Mrs Rosaleen Jones (nee Connolly) Died 4th June 2008 after battling breast cancer for 5 years. She leaves behind a husband David and son Matthew.

Rosaleen was educated at the Sacred Heart Grammar School in Newry and Queen’s where she studied Italian and Psychology, before going on to the University of Ulster to study Law and European Studies.

Rosaleen battled cancer for 5 years having only one period of remission in 2005, but the cancer remained in remission for only a short period. She fought a long hard battle, trying alternative as well as conventional treatments to try and beat her cancer.

She travelled extensively during her life living in places such as Seattle, Munich, Australia and finally settling in Knutsford, England. Rosaleen touched the lives of so many people, she left behind a legacy of love and bravery to all those who new her, we will always be grateful for having known her and loved her.

Peter Jupp, historian and teacher. Lecturer and Reader in Modern History 1964-1993, Professor of British History 1993-2005, Emeritus Professor 2005-6. Died 14 September 2006.

Peter Jupp: an appreciation For many people, both inside and outside the University, the name of Peter Jupp was synonymous with History at Queen’s. Peter spent almost his entire working life here. Originally appointed as a Lecturer in Modern History in 1964, he was advanced to a chair of British History in 1993, and after his retirement in 2005 was made Emeritus Professor, a distinction which gave him great pleasure. His death, on 14 September, after a short but valiant fight against a cruel illness, was a shattering loss to family and friends, to colleagues at Queen’s, and to the wider community of historians of modern Britain and Ireland, of which he was a distinguished member.

Pete, as he preferred to be called, had come to Queen’s from Reading, having taken his Ph.D. under the guidance of the formidable Arthur Aspinall, a specialist in the history of late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain with a penchant for studying ‘high’ politics — courts and cabinets — and for collecting and editing historical texts. Aspinall’s interests were reflected in some of Pete’s enduring scholarly preoccupations: he was himself a scrupulous practitioner of the traditional virtues of documentary research, and followed ‘paper trails’ to country houses and record offices in the same way that Aspinall had done. Some of his most important historical writing focused on the evolution of government policy, notably his monumental biography of Lord Grenville (1985), and the closely argued British Politics on the Eve of Reform … 1828–30 (1998), which grew out of the special subject he taught to History finalists. However —influenced perhaps by the powerful personality of his first professor at Queen’s, Michael Roberts — he transcended narrower concerns and engaged with the wider political worlds of Britain and Ireland, writing extensively about parliamentary elections, and the workings of public opinion. His final book, The Governing of Britain, 1688–1848, published only last summer, was an attempt to draw together ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics. Though it was not a conscious summation of his life’s work — many other projects were lined up for what we all hoped would be a long and productive retirement — this book was in a sense an appropriate place for him to have stopped writing, since it was both deeply traditional in its focus, and at the same time innovative in methodology and in tune with current trends in the historiography of the ‘long eighteenth century’.

Probably the most persistent and endearing qualities that Pete displayed as a historian and a teacher were enthusiasm and open-mindedness. For someone who usually had strong opinions to express — on anything from politics to jazz, from cars to crime writing, from fly-fishing to the fortunes of Tottenham Hotspur — he was surprisingly undogmatic, willing to listen, to be persuaded, and to take up new ideas. Students, both undergraduates and postgraduates, found this attitude stimulating. Colleagues, within and beyond Queen’s, were equally enthused, and made to feel that their particular contribution to scholarship was the most important thing that was going on at that moment. Pete was a man quite without intellectual pride, or the kind of jealousy of his own achievements that too frequently disfigures great scholars. Leaving aside a healthy disrespect for bureaucratic necessities, he was in many respects a model teacher: a lively and authoritative lecturer, a patient and conscientious tutor, with a real concern for the well-being of his students, and a research supervisor who encouraged students to stand on their own feet and gave them the confidence to do so.

Pete’s contribution to the life of this University for over forty years was truly remarkable: inside and outside the classroom. He gave unstinting support to student-organised events, leading field trips, even deejaying at History student formals; was a mainstay of the music scene at Queen’s, especially in the promotion of jazz; was a great supporter of the Bookshop; in short, he was an advocate of everything that has traditionally made up the life of a university. Above all, perhaps, he was someone who still cherished the ideal of a university as a community of scholars, and a department as a group of colleagues rather than a regiment of ‘staff’ to be line-managed. His retirement — after a final year in which he had, true to form, demanded to be ‘loaded up’ with teaching — was disappointingly low key for the host of friends and admirers who had hoped to be able to pay him their respects on a formal occasion. He refused a farewell celebration in the Great Hall, on the grounds that he did not wish to oblige people to pay to have dinner with him, but was pleased as well as embarrassed to be ambushed by colleagues at a departmental leaving party. Of course, we all assumed that he would be around for years to come, and his declared intention to play a part in the life of the School of History and Anthropology was manifest in the first, and, as it turned out, only, year of his retirement by his continued attendance at seminars and lectures, the familiar bursts of laughter in offices and corridors, the further multiplication of Jupp stories — usually told against himself. His final illness came as a sudden and savage blow. The memorial gathering that Belinda and his family had organised, was a unique event, packing the Great Hall, with those at the back standing four deep. Friends and admirers had come from far and wide, across Britain and Ireland. Memories were shared. Inevitably, there was laughter, for Pete brought a vast amount of warmth and humour into life, and it is for his personality as much as his achievements that he will be remembered by those of us who had the privilege to know him. Peter Jupp, historian and teacher. Lecturer and Reader in Modern History, QUB, 1964-93, Professor of British History 1993-2005, Emeritus Professor 2005-6. Died 14 September 2006.

A further obituary can also be found on the Daily Telegraph website by clicking here.

H Douglas Keith (died February 2003)

(The following appreciation of the life and career of H Douglas Keith, was published before his death in February 2003, and is © American Chemical Society).

H Douglas Keith, a leading figure in polymer research for almost half a century, recently celebrated his 75th birthday. Keith was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on 10 March 1927. He obtained a BSc degree from Queen's University, Belfast, in 1948 and a PhD in Physics from the University of Bristol, UK, in 1951. Doug studied under, and worked closely with, such luminaries as Peter Paul Ewald, Sir Neville Mott and Sir Charles Frank.

Keith began his career as a Lecturer in Physics (specializing in optics) at the University of Bristol, where he taught between 1951 and 1956. The following year he immigrated to the United States and joined Elio Passaglia's group at the American Viscose Corporation in Marcus Hook, PA, which was then starting a research program on polymeric materials. It was there that Keith met Frank J Padden Jr, who became his lifelong collaborator. While at American Viscose, Keith and Padden did their first major work in polymer science, in which they analyzed both theoretically and experimentally the optical properties of spherulites.

In 1960, Keith and Padden moved to Bell Telephone Laboratories, where Keith had been asked to put together a group to advance the nascent field of polymer morphology. Very soon thereafter they published a highly influential paper describing what is broadly known as the 'Keith and Padden theory of spherulitic crystallization'. This phenomenological theory explained the crystallization and structure of polymeric spherulites based upon competition between their crystalline growth rate and diffusional processes in the melt and has been used very extensively in the study of polymer melt solidification. Subsequently, he and Padden provided a major morphological study of melt-crystallized isotactic polypropylene, a material of great industrial importance that was just coming to the fore. They did the same for isotactic polystyrene, polyesters, and other classes of polymeric materials, including a number of polypeptides (in which they were joined by B Lotz and G Giannoni, who were at that time visiting scientists in Keith's laboratory). As part of that work they also obtained the first chain-folded single crystals of DNA.

Another seminal contribution made under Keith's leadership was the discovery of intercrystalline links between lamellae in polymeric spherulites, which provided the needed explanation for the mechanical strength of crystalline polymers. This discovery resulted from Keith's ingenious experimental design, which involved cocrystallization with low-molecular-weight hydrocarbons that could then be dissolved away, thus revealing the macromolecular connections between individual crystals. For their many important contributions to the field of polymer crystallization and morphology, Keith and Padden were honoured with the High Polymer Physics Prize of the American Physical Society in 1973.

At Bell Laboratories, Doug Keith was rapidly promoted to Head of the Analytical Chemistry Research Department and, later, Head of the Organic Materials Research Department. Doug was a superb mentor to many scientists who had come to work with him as postdoctoral researchers or who began their careers in his Department.

In 1988, Doug Keith retired from AT & T Bell Laboratories and moved to the University of Connecticut. There he continued to tackle the thorny problem of lamellar twist and banding in polymeric spherulites. Characteristic of his enduring passion for science, Doug has continued his creative work on polymer morphology even after becoming Professor Emeritus in 1996. His latest publication (currently in press) provides an interpretation for the generation of the remarkable giant screw dislocations in polymers.

Keith has been very active in the American Physical Society (APS), of which he is a Fellow. He chaired the Polymer Physics Division in 1965-1966 and later (1977-1985) was its representative (Divisional Councillor) at the APS Council; he has also chaired the Committee on Applications of Physics. Doug is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was the 1986 Fraser Price Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Over the years, he has served on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Macromolecules and the Journal of Polymer Science.

Doug Keith has been an inspiration to all who have worked or interacted with him. As one of the early pioneers in polymer morphology, he laid many of the foundations on which the field has been built. His research combines great insight with brilliant experimental design and analytical depth - and invariably invokes rigorous, fundamental science. His written and spoken English are always elegant, clear and precise: his manuscripts are a pleasure to read for their cogency and style, and his lectures are exciting and memorable. To his younger colleagues, students, and postdocs, he provides an outstanding example of how science ought to be conducted and embodies the proverbial description of 'a scholar and a gentleman'.

Denis Kearney BA 1962, died 4 August 2005

Denis died on August 4th at home in the loving care of his family. For nine months he had fought a courageous battle against serious illness with all the resilience and dignity that he exhibited in his personal and professional life.

The number of well-wishers during his illness and mourners at his funeral bore eloquent testimony to his warmth of personality and breadth of interests.

Steeped in the love of literature since his university days, keenly interested in politics and history and a gifted footballer representing the Queen’s University of Belfast at Sigerson and combined universities level, Denis enjoyed nothing more than the stimulation of animated conversation, often to be seen among his friends with head inclined and finger raised in mock didactic fashion. Moments of quieter reflection were spent in the Linenhall library where he held membership for most of his life.

Denis came to the practice of Law after some years teaching and at a time of serious social unrest in Northern Ireland. He founded a highly regarded Civil Law practice which developed over the years into the practice now known as Kearney Sefton Solicitors. In acknowledgement of his measured judgement and professional reputation he was appointed a deputy district judge, a position he held for twenty years. His sense of social commitment saw him closely involved in initiatives such as Extern, which provides community-based services for vulnerable people, and The Northern Consensus Group, a cross-community think-tank and lobby group. He also served on The Probation Board for Northern Ireland. His contribution in these fields was duly acknowledged by both British and Irish governments.

Denis possessed one of the loveliest of all human qualities, the gift of conviviality, and he and his beloved wife Roisin kept an open and generous house where conversation, song and the company of friends flourished. Now for Roisin and their children Paula and Gavin, it will seem that the light has gone from their lives. As for his brothers and sisters and his numerous friends, their entire circle will be diminished and impoverished.

Some words of Patrick Kavanagh come to mind to the effect that the greatest sophistication in life is to return to one’s roots. In death Denis had done just that. He lies buried at Bryansford in the foothills of the majestic Mourne mountains and in the embrace of his beloved County Down.

Robert Kearney, Past President and CEO of Bell Canada (died 9 October 2005)

(Toronto Globe & Mail)

Bob Kearney passed away peacefully in the evening hours of Oct 9th 2005, at the William Osler Health Centre in Toronto, Ontario. Beloved husband of Denise Brule of Montreal, loving father of Stephane and his wife Esther, Catou and her husband Ia, dearly loved grandpa to Matthew, Hannah, Abigail, and Josephine, and brother to Molly, Patrick, and Sheila of Northern Ireland.

Born in Belfast in 1936, Bob Kearney was a pupil at Methodist College Belfast from 1949-1954 and a student at Queen’s from 1954-1958 where he qualified with a BA. He was hired directly from Queen’s by the Bell Telephone Company where he met and married the daughter of a senior employee and continued working until his untimely death.

(Appreciation to follow)

Langford Kidd, Director of Paediatric Cardiology at Hopkins (died 19 July 2005)

The Baltimore Sun

By Jacques Kelly

22 July 2005

Dr Langford Kidd, a retired Director of Paediatric Cardiology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine who studied infants with heart disease and the effects of high blood pressure on adolescents, died of a heart attack on 19 July at his Roland Park home. He was 74.

‘He was a master educator’, said Dr Edward B Clark, chairman of the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Utah, who studied under Dr Kidd. ‘He was able to capture the attention of students and hold it while he transmitted complex concepts. His role as a teaching mentor in the field has been quite spectacular.’

Serving at Hopkins as the Harriet Lane Professor of Paediatric Cardiology, he studied children with Down syndrome and found many of them had heart disease. He then collaborated with surgeons to develop surgical treatment. Colleagues said he built up the catheterization and echo-cardiography labs. He was named Professor Emeritus at his retirement in 1996.

‘He was very interested in his patients and their relationships within their families,’ said a retired colleague, Dr Catherine A Neill. ‘He had a warm and empathetic personality. He also had a beautiful speaking voice, and it was a pleasure to hear him lecture.’

Born Bernard Sean Langford Kidd in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he was a graduate of the College of St Columba in Dublin and earned a medical degree at Queen’s University in Belfast. He was then a Fellow of the Royal College of Professors in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Before coming to Hopkins in 1975, Dr Kidd was Assistant Director and Associate Professor of Paediatric Cardiology at the Sick Children’s Hospital in Toronto, where he investigated the surgical repair of complex heart defects.

In a 1979 Evening Sun profile, Dr Kidd discussed working with adolescents with high blood pressure. He estimated that as much as 10% of the nation’s population under the age of 18 was affected by the condition.

‘Adolescence is a very stressful time of life, and what we hope to do is help those teenagers through this period and start them on an adult life on a new track for blood pressure and everything else’, he said in the article.

He recommended exercise, relaxation techniques and lowering salt intake.

‘To his patients, he had a reassuring aura. He could fill a room with his exuberance’, said Dr Henry M Seidel, a retired Hopkins Paediatrics Professor.

Friends and family members recalled Dr Kidd’s habit of always wearing crimson red socks, which he took to sporting after his sons and daughters kept snatching his dark-coloured socks. They also said he steadfastly refused to trim his bushy eyebrows.

‘He could quiet any child’, said Hazel McCandless Kidd, his wife of 46 years. ‘It used to embarrass me at restaurants. He would go up to a neighbouring table with children present and start talking. He had an enormous sense of humour and could speak to children at their level’.

Dr Kidd co-wrote the 1976 book The Child with Congenital Heart Disease After Surgery, and he was the author of dozens of scientific papers and chapters in medical textbooks.

He was a former trustee of St Paul’s School and a former president of the Maryland Chapter of the American Heart Association.

Survivors also include two sons, Ian Kidd of Baltimore and Andrew Kidd of Ruxton; two daughters, Caroline Kidd Barringer of Catonsville and Deirdre Pacylowski of Elkridge; and six grandchildren.

Charles William Patrick Bennett King, BSc Civil Engineering 1952 (died December 2005)

Charles William Patrick Bennett King, better known as Patrick or Paddy, was born the eldest child of Georgina and William Arthur King in Half Way Tree, St Andrew, Jamaica. Throughout his life he was very athletic and health conscious. He loved horseriding in his youth, was a rower whilst at Queen's and keen walker and regualr swimmer in his later years.He graduated from Queen's with a BSc in Civil Engineering in 1952 and qualified as a Chartered Civil Engineer. He worked and travelled in the West Indies and South Africa accompanied by his wife Waveney and their children Tony, Debbie and Gina. As an engineer he worked for many prestigious Civil Engineering companies working on such projects as Nuclear Power Stations, Sugar Refineries and Plantations, Harbours and Docks, Bridges and Airstrips.

Patrick took early retirement to spend more time with his family. He spent his later years writing articles for the Sporting Life, The Times, Daily Mail and Ceefax. He embraced all types of new technologies and became a day trader.

He will be sorely missed by his wife Waveney, children Tony, Debbie and Gina, his brothers and their wives Peter and Veronica, Ben and Elaine and Robin and Roz and their families, his numerous cousins, relatives and friends.

Dr Michael Knight, Reader in Law (died October 2003)

(Obituary by John Stannard, School of Law)

Many former law students will mourn the recent death of Michael Knight. He was one of the great 'characters' of Queen's, which he served for many years, but will be remembered not just for his personality, colourful as it was, but for his devotion to students and colleagues.

Michael Knight possessed a remarkable mind. He won scholarships to Protora Royal School in Enniskillen, and then to Trinity College, Dublin, where he excelled not only academically but also as an actor and a debater. After graduating with high honours, he taught at Cardiff before returning to Queen's in 1965. His groundbreaking study of criminal appeals won him the rare honour of an earned LLD, and by the age of 40 he had achieved more than most academics do in a lifetime. Yet it was as a teacher that Michael will best be remembered. His lectures were legendary, but he was admired most for his care, patience, and good humour. In this respect he was a model for others to imitate.

Michael's perfectionism made it hard for him to relax. His only refuge from his inner demons was an addiction to alcohol that ultimately cost him the career he so loved. After a major breakdown in 1990, he retired on the grounds of ill health. Yet with the help of his friends he managed to put his life back together again, and to help others in the same situation. He never lost his tremendous sense of humour, or his ability to laugh at the follies of the world. In his heyday Michael Knight was a fine academic who loved his job, but in the final decade of his life he also demonstrated his capacity to excel as a human being outside the confines of work.

Many have achived greater recognition than Michael Knight, but none will be remembered with greater affection.

Dr William (Bill) Laird, 1941

Published by Ballymena Times

The Ballymena borough and wider North Antrim community has been saddened by the recent death of Dr William (Bill) Laird, FRCOG.

Dr Laird passed away at his Ballykennedy Road home, Gracehill, on February 24. He was 92.

Renowned throughout the province and beyond in the field of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, he was amongst the first generation of consultant gynaecologists in Northern Ireland and during his long and distinguished career, he delivered some 12,000 babies.

Having served in the RAF during World War II, he retrained for the soon to be National Health Service and the Ulster Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society, founded in 1952, was largely his brainchild.

For many years, Dr Laird had limited support as consultant gynaecologist in the whole of east Antrim. It was, however, a status quo he successfully fought to change and he was also at the very heart of the struggle to expand the maternity ward at Ballymena’s Waveney Hospital.

In his eulogy at Dr Laird’s funeral service at St Colmanell’s Church of Ireland, Ahoghill, last Monday, Rector, Rev Mark Loney, told the large congregation: “Even with the high regard amassed across the borough, Bill was not one to intentionally parade his eminent career in Gynaecology and obstetrics. He did not like a big fuss, especially over himself.

“We gather in this church to mourn and to give thanks. It is a fitting place to do so, for it was a place that was very dear to Bill’s heart. His faithful devotion and sheer determination against failing health to remain regular in his pew for worship Sunday by Sunday would have put the youngest and the fittest in our parish to shame.

“Bill loved this place and in his time tendered monumental service to this parish as both a member of vestry and a wise and gracious gentleman”.

The son of a tea merchant, Dr Laird was a man of “gentleness and humility, warmth and dignity” who had a great sense and love of family, said Rev Loney.

“In his whole career he never lost that sense of wonder and awe of new life,” he told the congregation.

"Bill’s strength as a person was expressed best through the remarkable quality of his dealings with people - his ability to make all human encounters, however fleeting, feel both special and personal, to the point that people remembered him and still do, indeed always will, with great fondness and the highest respect”.

Rev Loney paid fitting tribute, on behalf of the Laird family, to the carers - Josephine, June, Jemma, Mandy, Nichola, Winifred, Barbara and Helena, and the nurses, hospital staff and social services, who “made Bill’s life so comfortable and without whom his desire to remain safely at home until his end would have been nigh impossible”.

Dr. Laird was interred at the churchyard of St Colmanell’s on February 28 following his funeral service in the adjoining Parish Church. Husband of the late Vera, he is survived by his children, Shirley, Jeannie and Steve, grandchildren Chris, Joe, Nick, Rebecca, Hannah and Daniel, and wider family circle.

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John Robinson Marshall (died 8 December 2005)

(Obituary and Appreciation by Dr Helen Marshall)

Dr Jack Marshall could be described as the epitome of the 'quiet achiever' with international recognition in the field of medical education.

Jack was one of four children; three boys who all studied medicine in Ireland and emigrated to the USA and Australia and a sister who became a teacher and who resides in Belfast.

Jack graduated from Queen's in 1955. He obtained Honours in Anatomy, a Medal in Bacteriology and a Scholarship in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. After four years at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast he emigrated to Adelaide with his young family and from 1958 to 1971 worked as a General Practitioner initially at Clearview and then at Glynde. In 1958 he was appointed as Clinical Assistant in Cardiology at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) and in 1992 was made a Senior Visiting Specialist. His association with the RAH spanned nearly 50 years, and he was still working there as a Senior Visiting Specialist until a few weeks before his death.

Jack was also a prolific author and talented scholar who remained passionate about education and training throughout his medical career. His publication list was extensive with his most notable achievement the 338 Check programs (Continuous Home Evaluation of Clinical Knowledge, Understanding and Problem Solving) he published in 30 years as Director of Check. The Check Program is used internationally and continues to present a challenging and unique method of providing continuing education for GPs. Jack also had four books published on education in General practice.

Jack played a major role in the establishment of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioner's (RACGP) Family Medicine Program and in 2004 was made a Life Fellow of the RACGP in recognition of his enormous contribution to general practice education and the many positions he held in education and training throughout the college .

Jack also achieved extensive international recognition for his expertise in medical education including visiting professorships at Jefferson University, Philadelphia, McMaster's University, Ontario, the School of Medical Education, Southern Illinois Unviersity and at the University of Kebangsaan, Malaysia. In 1984 he was a consultant to the American Board of Family Practice, in 1985 WHO Consultant to the Government of Myanmar and in 1990 WHO Consultant in Seoul, Korea, Japan and the Peoples' Republic of China.

His commitment to professional excellence culminated in Jack being awarded the Membership of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day's Honours 2002.

Throughout his extensive career he was also a wonderful father and great provider who gave his five children every opportunity to achieve what they wanted in life. Jack moved to live at Victor Harbor eight years ago where he took up painting as a hobby and became a local identity. He is survived by his brother Bertie (USA), sister May (NI), his children; Peter, David, Helen, Trish and Fiona and 11 grandchildren.

Aodh Mag Eoin (Hugh McGeown), BA 1949

(published in The Guardian, 1 April 2011)

Our friend Aodh Mag Eoin, who has died aged 83, was a renowned Irish teacher at the boys' grammar school St Columb's college, in Derry, Northern Ireland. His pupils won many scholarships, debating competitions and awards for their proficiency in Irish. Some became excellent writers in Irish and continued as university lecturers and academics. Two of them, Seamus Heaney and John Hume, won the Nobel prize. Aodh also helped many colleagues achieve distinction.

A noted scholar, he was an authority on Irish grammar and was consulted by Tomas de Bhaldraithe when he was editing his English-Irish dictionary in the 1950s. At all times Aodh ensured that he preserved the Ulster dialect, while he also had an understanding and admiration for dialects from other provinces.

Born on the Falls Road, Belfast, Aodh won a scholarship to St Malachy's college and then Queen's University Belfast, where he obtained first place in Celtic studies in 1949. He taught for a short period at St Matthew's school, Short Strand, and carried out further research at University College Dublin.

He attended Gaelic League classes early in life and he was soon to become a member of the Ulster branch of the Gaelic League. He was also the treasurer of the Irish Dancing Commission. Aodh had a keen interest in swimming, and was a qualified instructor. He founded the Derry city swimming club and took part in competitions around the world.

Alongside his work at St Columb's, he was appointed to the staff of St Brigid's Gaeltacht college in Ranafast, Co Donegal, where he taught each summer for 50 years. He was part of the local culture there and was often in the company of storytellers, singers and historians. He was well-known by young and old in nearly every house in the area. Aodh had a great passion for life and remembered every name and face going back to the 1920s. In his retirement, his wide interests ranged from opera to Indian cooking. Despite his decreasing mobility, he would often take the bus from Derry to Belfast to catch the afternoon screening of a classic film.

Aodh was an only child and never married, although he loved a few women dearly. He is survived by several distant cousins. His heart belonged to his language and his country, along with a deep faith in God. He will be missed by many friends, who are left with fond memories of drinking and storytelling until dawn.

Aodh Mag Eoin's former pupils included two Nobel prize winners - Seamus Heaney and John Hume.

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Derek Paul Maguire (died 17 February 2005)

Derek Paul Maguire, beloved husband of Dr Nancy Maguire, passed away on Thursday 17 February 2005 at the age of 83.

Derek was born on 13 June 1921 in Derry, Northern Ireland and was raised in England. He fought in the Burma Campaign with the Bombay Grenadiers in World War II attaining the rank of Captain and being Mentioned in Dispatches.

He attained his law degree at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland and was called to the Bar in London, England in 1949. He then qualified as a solicitor in his own time and practiced law in England for 5 years.

He married Nancy in 1950 and they immigrated to Calgary in 1957 where he practiced as a litigation lawyer until 1991. An avid reader and chess player, Derek’s interests involved Toastmasters, Profile and the Last Post Fund. He also enjoyed hiking, canoeing, sailing, cross country skiing, camping and swimming. Derek was a father to Brian (Sharon), Michael, Elizabeth (David), and Clare; and grandfather to Megan, Jamie, Kevin, Alan and Laura. Derek was predeceased by daughter Pat in 2001.

Sir Allen McClay, DSc 1995 (died on January 12 2010)

Sir Allen McClay was the founding Chair of the Queen’s University of Belfast Foundation and one of the largest benefactors to Queen’s in the University’s history. The McClay Research Centre for Pharmaceutical Sciences in the School of Pharmacy, which bears his name, was funded by The McClay Trust, a charitable body which he established.

He also made substantial donations to support research and education in Chemistry and Pharmacy at Queen’s, and to a range of other projects, including The Library at Queen’s and the restoration of the University’s Great Hall.

He is survived by his wife, Heather.

(Full obituaries can be found in Times Online and Irish Times).

Bronagh McGivern (died November 2005)

Bronagh McGivern, BSSc 1995, had a very successful career in financial services which brought her all over the world. She started out in the AIB in London before changing to the financial district where she worked for JPMorgan. She remained with the company in London for a number of years and then moved firstly to New York and then to Luxembourg, the funds centre of Europe. After some time, Bronagh returned to Dublin but soon after was diagnosed with cancer. She died in November 2005, aged 33 and is survived by her husband Cathal.

Margaret Kinsley McIvor (died 26 January 2007 - aged 91)

(Obituary and Appreciation by Dr Elizabeth Miller (daughter))

Margaret was born in Belfast , the elder daughter of Robert Nicholas and his wife, Mary Bell. He worked for the Belfast Bank (now the Northern). She had a sister, Betty. When her father was transferred to Bangor, the family went to live in Mount Pleasant (near Pickie) and her long love affair with the sea was born. She was a good swimmer and loved the water and walks along the sea shore. Summers in Bangor continued for two months each year until the late seventies.

Her first school was Miss McGrath’s – a small private school and there she met Vangie Ellis who became a life long friend. She went on to Victoria College, being of an academic bent and won a scholarship to Queens. She was unable to accept it as her father refused to sign the clause stating that she would be unable to go without it and that must have been the only time in her life when she did not agree with him. Her father was a remarkable man who had the gift of making everything fun, I think she inherited this from him as she always had a smile and a gift for talking to everybody and anybody and making them feel special. A grandson said that she always made him feel that he was the only person in the world when she was with him and others shared this perception.

While she was at Queen’s the family were in Rathfriland. During the week she stayed with her Aunt Nellie James in Eglantine Avenue. Unfortunately, at this time she became ill (probably rheumatic fever) and she spent months in bed so when she graduated in 1936 with an honours degree in English she was very disappointed it was not the highest class. (Professor Baxter was the English professor at that time.) Most of the people she was with at Queen’s also became life long friends. She rode pillion on a motorcycle, very daring in those days, which amazed her grandsons. Soon after graduating she met the man who became my father. He was older by thirteen years and also worked in the Belfast Bank. He was Glennie Charles Alexander McIvor and they married on 10th June 1939, having bought 13, Kincora Avenue in Belfast.

So started the Kincora years, she was once the new bride and ended up the oldest inhabitant but it was a fairly stable population and the neighbours became friends and remained so. Life was very different then. Elizabeth, her only surviving daughter, was born in May 1940 while the family were still in Kincora. The war intervened and they moved to a cottage in Killinchy for a short time but she developed pneumonia and nearly died – she was one of the first to be treated with the new M&B 633 (a sulphonamide) with quite unpleasant side effects. The family then went to her parents, still in Rathfriland, to recuperate and stayed there until the war ended in 1945. The friends from those years also remained close to her.

Back in Kincora, life resumed. Jane, who hailed from Sligo, became a part of the household. Bridge parties became popular and she enjoyed this game right into her eighties. Reading was always a big part of her life, as was gardening. In 1951 her father died. The family moved to Eglantine Avenue to care for her Mother and Aunt. She started looking for work as a teacher but because she had no experience this was difficult. She finally found, or was found by, Miss Meek, (Mrs. Anderson,) who had a private school in Bawnmore Road and she settled very happily to coaching younger children. This continued until Miss Meek retired. Trying to find employment, it was suggested that she accept temporary work and she had a couple of very hard years moving around in situations for which life had not prepared her – teenage boys towering over her who did not want to be in school. She coped and was noticed by Miss Craig of the Girl’s Model and as soon as a job came up, she moved there. As head of the English department she was fully involved and again made many firm friends among the staff and pupils. In 1959 she went on her first school trip to Austria and went on a cable car! Other school trips followed and great fun was had by all.

During the years in Eglantine Avenue she was fully involved in Queen’s activities and an enthusiastic member of the Queen’s Women’s Graduates Association. She served a number of years on the committee and was the liaison officer with the Women’s Club. She always enjoyed the meetings and encouraged friends to join as well. Again, the friends she made there have remained friends until now. The family returned to Kincora in 1966 and she started teaching at Bloomfield Collegiate where Miss Ethel Gray was headmistress. She stayed until she retired in 1980. So, there were more friends! She was fully involved with plays, public speaking and a magazine. She disliked speaking in public herself and was determined that ‘her girls’ would be able to do so. The only time she spoke in public was when Alison Rooke, who had been a teacher with her, asked her to do a Women’s World Day of Prayer sermon. She also spoke at her own retirement and apparently both times she was excellent. She continued with QWGA during all this time, played some bridge and enjoyed outings to the theatre.

When she finally retired she joined Mrs. Devlin’s English class at QUB and went on holidays with her. The most memorable was the Russian trip. The buildings were magnificent and she was enthralled by all she saw. She continued to enjoy bridge. She joined the Knock Reading Circle which met each month and so she kept up with a wide variety of books. Books were probably her main passion in life and she was enthusiastic in passing on her love of books and English to so many. She attended St. Columba’s and supported the Mother’s Union, especially the Monday afternoon group. She advised one friend to live life to the full and never refuse an invitation. When in her eighties she wrote once that as she was getting slower she had decided to accept only one invitation per day but her letters did not reflect this resolve.

She loved travelling and was very interested in all she saw. As well as the Moscow trip mentioned she was away with school parties to Innsbruck and Paris. Her first trip to Africa was in 1967 and she explored Rhodesia, driving down to Durban, over the garden route to Cape Town back up through Kimberly and back to Salisbury (Harare now). There was never a quiet moment in the car. She flew to Malawi where we stayed with Hugh (later to be her son-in-law) and she was interested in all she saw. Later she came with us to America (Houston and the Southern States as well as Disney World) and she went with her sister to Canada for her nephew’s graduation. She also made four more trips to Malawi.

In 1968, her daughter married and moved to Malawi. She kept in touch by writing, she was a prolific writer. There was an endless stream of letters telling all about her doings, expressing her opinions about things so one always knew what was happening in her life. She was widowed in 1975. Life gradually settled down for her, she continued teaching until 1980, when she was 65. By this time her grandsons David, followed by Shaun, had returned to NI to boarding school. She looked after them and was a real surrogate Mum, going to all the parents evenings and house competitions. They were able to be with her most Sundays and her friends were roped in to help entertain them. She had a wonderful rapport with them and her friends knew all about them and their doings. Richard followed in 1987 and she started again with him. All the boys developed an abiding affection for her. I don’t think she ever recovered after seeing Richard with bad cerebral malaria in 1996, it really upset her. She had had a scare when David had malaria at Loughborough in the late eighties, but she didn’t SEE him.

In 1998 she had her heart operation and did have to slow down but she continued going out. She enjoyed her bridge and the Afternoon Group at the church and still attended QWGA meetings. She fell at home and broke her wrist. It was never quite right after that and she found it increasingly difficult to get around. She went to Malawi for three months to recuperate but missed her friends and was quite ready to return home. The next winter she had ‘flu and, helped by her nephew Bobby, decided to go to Hamilton House, an Abbeyfield. After we retired and arrived back in Kincora in April 2002 she decided to stay in Hamilton House where she was very happy. She had a number of falls and became less able to manage so, after a spell in hospital, she went to Strathearn Court nursing home. She missed ‘her boys’; Shaun had gone to Australia in 2001 and David followed in 2004, while Richard took himself to Mexico. She was delighted to be able to be at David’s wedding in Donegal in 2003 (where she saw ‘her boys’ all together again) but she missed Shaun’s wedding in Australia in 2005. She always followed their news avidly and was delighted to become a great grandmother to Mia (Shaun) in 2005 and Spencer (David) in 2006. She saw both of them in the year before she died and I think she felt she had come full circle. It was shortly after David and his family returned to Australia that she died peacefully.

Her legacy continues on in the lives of those she influenced and encouraged to make the most of themselves – so she still lives on in them and in our hearts.

William McKaigChief Technician, Geology Department (died January 2004)

(Appreciation by Patrick Gaffikin)

Billy McKaig was born in Scotland and, although he lived in Belfast for most of his life, he still valued his Scottish roots. At will he could quote from Robbie Burns and could recall with endearment his school days and early employment in his beloved Scotland. After serving in the Royal Navy during World War II, he moved to Northern Ireland where he met his wife Eva and worked as an electrician. When the Geology Department was being constructed, Billy participated in all the major electrical work. In 1955 Billy commenced employment in the newly-built Geology Department as a technician under the then Professor of Geology, Alwyn Williams. Initially Billy's duties involved the making of thin-sections of geological specimens and the Department's photographic work. Later he was promoted to the post of Chief Technician but he retained his proficiency at these exercises, which he passed on to newly recruited technicians over the years.

He was, literally, to paraphrase an old expression, 'a master of all trades' - able to undertake not only electrical work, but plumbing, joinery and mechanical work for the Department. Billy knew every nook and cranny in the Geology building and when any member of staff - even the academic staff - couldn't recall where a set of samples, equipment, books etc were stored, Billy was invariably able to locate the elusive articles.

It was probably his Navy training that moulded him into a strict disciplinarian, a quality that did not go unrecognised by both colleagues and students alike. Even those students who were recalcitrant by nature, Billy was always able to 'keep in line' - often to the relief and gratitude of the academics. For the conservation of the Department's funds, he always practised stern parsimony with regard to the acquisition and use of laboratory equipment, chemicals etc - a trait which, he often joked, was ingrained by his Scottish upbringing. If a student or colleague required to have purchased say three particualr items, Billy's response would be 'two would be enough'! And, knowing Billy's strong character, all would know there was no negotiation on such issues!

Each year Billy drove the minibus transporting students for field-trips. The story is told that on one occasion, before the students gathered at a locality in southern England, the lecturer had urgently to attend to other business and he intimated to Billy that he might not have been able to return in time to take the field-studies. So, plunging a large note book into Billy's hand, the lecturer told him if he wasn't back in time, Billy was to conduct the proceedings, as all the information he required was in the book!

Billy retired from the Geology Department in 1986 and he spent the final years of his life in the Somme Nursing Home where many of his colleagues visited him regularly. We were always amazed at his retentive memory. He could remember the names of postgraduate and even honours' students stretching back to the 1950s! His conversational skills and sense of humour remained with him to the end. At his funeral service in St Mark's Church, Holywood Road, the former Geology Department was represented by both academics and colleagues.

Essentially, Billy McKaig was a true Queensman - always giving priority to the interests of the Geology Department, and Queen's generally. He is survived by his daughter Heather, son Steven and grandchildren and shall always be remembered with great esteem by this family, colleagues and friends.

Malcolm McKeown, BA, DipEd MEd (died October 2001)

(Press Extract from Eastern Daily Press and North Norfolk News)

Malcolm McKeown, who devoted his life to music and education died in October 2001, aged 72. Malcolm was born and brought up in Belfast where he attended Belfast Royal Academy and Queen's University. In his early teaching days he taught James Galway, who in his autobiography, described Mr McKeown as 'the teacher to whom I owe most'. A postgraduate year at Queen's studying psychology, was followed by his appointment as Educational Psychologist to the Belfast Education Authority.

In 1965 Malcolm and his family moved to Norwich, where he took up the post of Educational Psychologist for the City Education Authority. He brought on the development of the Child Guidance Clinic, and was instrumental in the building of Harford Manor Special School, Eaton Hall Residential School and the opening of the City's Teachers' Centre. In 1974 he was appointed Area Education Officer for North Norfolk, a post he held until his retirement in 1989.

Malcolm's musical life in performance began at Queen's. He was a member of the Aeolian singers and trained as an organist at St Anne's Cathedral. He toured Ireland with the Studio Opera Group, sang with Heather Harper, and a certain Val Doonican was his backing when he appeared on Ulster TV in its early days. He also broadcast regularly as a soloist on BBC NI.

When Malcolm moved to Norwich, all his musical energy was put to the service of the Cathedral, where he was tenor cantoris for almost twenty years. It was a source of much pride to him, that each of this two sons became Head Choristers in their turn, and it is entirely fitting that Malcolm's funeral service was held in the Cathedral, and it is there that he has been finally laid to rest. His family home remains in Norwich, and he leaves a wife, two sons, two daughters and seven grandchildren.

D B McNeill, MSc PhD FInstP, TD (1911-2010)

At 3pm on October 2nd the flag at Southampton University will fly at half mast to coincide with the Memorial Service for D.B.McNeill, MSc, PhD, F Inst P, TD who died in his 100th year on 8th August 2010 in Movilla House, Newtownards. Throughout his life he had a wide range of interests and pursuits, from physics, transport, rowing and history to education, the army and the church. He held senior positions as varied as his interests: Major in the Royal Corps of Signals, Esquire Bedale and Assistant Dean at the University of Southampton, Founder of Queen’s University Belfast Boat Club, Chairman of the McNeill Group and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ulster Museum. His collection of transport books and ephemera was amalgamated with that of his brother-in-law to form the ‘McNeill-Green Collection’ in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

His first transport article was accepted for publication by the ‘Railway Magazine’ while he was still boarding at the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen. After that he wrote many more articles and books, including two volumes on Irish steamships and three of the seven transport handbooks produced by the Ulster Museum. His final transport book, a joint publication on Ulster buses, was published in 1997. This was not his last work as his comparative study of Presbyterian church hymnals was published in 2008.

This dedication to study began young as he essentially taught himself physics, since it was not a subject then offered at advanced level at his school. He succeeded in reaching the level needed to enter Queen’s University Belfast for which, in 1936, he was their representative at the Tercentenary celebrations at the University of Harvard in the USA.

Five years earlier, in 1931, he had been one of the group who rekindled the University Boat Club, lapsed since the 19th century. His interest in rowing lasted all his life, during which time he competed himself, often as Captain, and coached teams in the Universities of Southampton and Belfast and the Belfast Academical Institution as well as personally funding a number of boats which bear his name. The bow of one reputedly ended its days adorning a pub wall in Henley.

He joined the staff of University College Southampton in 1938 where he remained until 1971. His most acclaimed work while there was the production, with Dr Jerrard of ‘A Dictionary of Scientific Terms’ that, between 1962 and 1992, ran to six editions in four languages and is still cited as the authority in this field by the Oxford English Dictionary. In 1953, as Esquire Bedale, he was actively involved in the formal conversion of the University College into Southampton University. He later became Assistant Dean of Science, though he preferred the more modest title of Faculty Secretary, a position he held for many years. He was deeply interested in his students, especially those in rowing and physics, with whom he often communicated as if from his talisman – and ice breaker – ‘Jumbo’, a large pink inflatable elephant that resided in his rooms. It was the days when academics were supposed to seem a little eccentric.

His university career was interrupted by the Second World War where he put his science to good use in the Royal Corps of Signals. In late 1939 he was attached to the 53rd Welsh Brigade who were sent to Northern Ireland in March 1940. After the Fall of France there were real fears that Germany would invade Ireland. If that were to happen, there was a plan in place for the British to assist the Irish government in repelling them. D.B. McNeill was to lead his troops to a pre-determined location to the west of Dublin. In the event he never had to leave Northern Ireland on duty until he was sent to Yorkshire and then to North Africa where he became the Chief Instructor of Signals. Not long after he had followed the fighting to Italy he was made senior technical support to Army Broadcasting from which he was finally released in December 1945 to resume university teaching. He remained in the Territorial Army until 1954, playing an active part in the Southampton OTC and maintaining support of Queen’s OTC for many years thereafter.

In 1974, after he had retired from Southampton, his brother Sean McNeill died so DB became Chairman of the McNeill Group, the Belfast based engineering and construction firm his father had founded at the beginning of the 20th century. This, in turn, led him to being invited onto the Board of Trustees of the Ulster Museum whose Chairman he subsequently became (1978-83).

He was involved with churches in both Southampton and Newtownards, where he settled on retirement. Although he was for some time an Elder in the Presbyterian Church, he liked also to attend the Church of Ireland.

He never married and is survived by his sister, sister-in-law and their families.

Born December 16 ,1935; Died November 22, 2011

Alan Millar, who has died suddenly aged 75, was an Army educator whose abiding passion was for the south-west coast of Scotland.

He was born in Helensburgh, but his roots were in Tighnabruaich, of which he was a true son. He was the last of the Millars to have lived at Tighnabruaich House, an outstanding feature of the Argyll landscape when viewed from the Kyles of Bute.

His family built their fortune through Millar's tannery, which flourished in Glasgow's Duke Street, and, at a young age, he was admitted into The Incorporation of Cordiners in Glasgow and became a Freeman of the city.

He attended Larchfield preparatory school for boys in Helensburgh, followed by Strathallan School in Perthshire, where he became head boy and won colours for rugby. Although happy and successful at school his fondest memories were of cruising the west coast during holidays on his family's motor cruisers.

On leaving school he went to Queen's University, Belfast, to read history where, due to his strong interest in archaeology, he was known as Morti after Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the famous archaeologist.

He always had a mischievous sense of humour and this came to the fore at university, most notably when he was involved in a prank where a visiting and heavily bearded Russian academic lecturing on the finer points of Marxism was exposed mid-delivery as a student imposter. He was nearly sent down for this but charmed his way out of trouble.

On graduating he joined the Army, initially for National Service but he stayed on for a full career in officer's education with the Royal Army Education Corps (RAEC) during which he was responsible for the education of young officers, and for presenting them for the Staff College, Camberley exams.

He was highly regarded by his students, many of whom went on to great heights while recalling his refreshing and informal style of instruction and his unstinting support.

During his career he continued his studies at Edinburgh University in adult education and at Cambridge and King's College London, where he was awarded an MA in war studies.

He served in the Outer Hebrides, Germany, Cyprus (where he covered Oman), Edinburgh, Wiltshire and Northern Ireland, where he was involved in vetting members of the Ulster Defence Regiment on its formation to screen out extremists. Latterly, he worked for the Open University and retained his interest in teaching and lecturing while further expanding his own academic interests.

The mainstay of his life thoughout was his wife Mary, whom he met on New Year's Eve in 1960 in Northern Ireland. He accidently spilled a glass of champagne on her as an opening gambit. It worked well and in more than 30 years of service and 50 years of marriage he and Mary were devoted to each other, moving 15 times and always building a warm, comfortable and welcoming home wherever they went.

He embraced practical hobbies with wonderful impracticality – luckily his wife Mary was not far behind to pick up the pieces. He caught the green bug early on, inflicting his family with a diet of home-grown vegetables with caterpillar, or home-grown caterpillar with vegetables, depending on how successful his harvest had been, all occasionally accompanied by his potent home brew and homemade wine.

This hobby came to full fruition in the dying days of his Army career and the early days of his retirement in Wiltshire, where he built a small but very successful market garden with hens and vegetables.

But he was happiest on the south- west coast of Scotland, both for idyllic hours sailing in his boat Ciamara and for the rich heritage of paddle steamers ploughing the Clyde. He returned to his native district of Tighnabruaich and Kames in 1992 and quickly became a bastion of the community and a very able and diligent member of the community council.

He was a prime force in the formation of a Probus Club of which he became secretary and then chairman, providing a meeting point for older men and a further resource in the area. In addition to collecting, editing and publishing a set of reminiscences by various contributors on older times in the district, he wrote a scholarly and highly-readable history of the area .

But perhaps the accomplishment which gave him the greatest personal satisfaction was his leading part in the initiative to save the pier which was built by his great- grandfather, and of which he also wrote a history. He lived to see the fulfilment of his dream and every summer he delighted in the Waverley's arrivals at the pier to embark and disembark passengers. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of paddle steamers on the Clyde and was sought after as a lecturer and an expert in this field.

He is interred in a family plot on a hillside above Tighnabruaich, overlooking his beloved Kyle. He leaves close family ties of his widow Mary, two sons Colin and Robin (who followed him into the Army) a daughter, Anna and two grandchildren, Hugo and Joshua.

Published on 6 December 2011
Colin Millar

Dr Victor Milligan, BSc Civil Engineering (Died March 4th 2009)

(Obituary from the Golder Associates website)

Victor Milligan was born in Northern Ireland and graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast, in 1951 with a BSc in civil engineering. He followed this up with a MSc in soil mechanics at Queen’s and then worked as a research fellow at Purdue University. Victor emigrated to Canada in 1955 and worked for Geocon Ltd., where he rapidly rose to the position of Chief Engineer.

In 1960, at 30 years of age, he partnered with Dr Hugh Golder to found Golder Associates.

Victor Milligan was recognized throughout the world as an expert in geotechnical engineering and especially in the fields of dams & embankments and soft ground tunnels. He worked on in excess of 150 separate dam projects and wrote extensively, with over 50 published papers.

He received two honorary doctorates - from Queen’s in Belfast and the University of Waterloo in Canada and was recognized with a number of prestigious awards including Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the U.K., where only 70 such persons are allowed from overseas.

Victor was both one of the founders and the initial editor of the Canadian Geotechnical Journal, president of the Consulting Engineers of Ontario, vice president for North America of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineers, and the recipient of five separate medals and awards, including the Thirty-Eighth Karl Terzaghi Lecturer in 2002, in Washington D.C., and the EIC Kennedy Medal in 2005.

Victor was always interested in amateur athletics. In his younger years, he was a world-class middle distance runner. He was captain of the Northern Ireland team at the 1954 British Empire Games in Vancouver, and ran in the “Miracle Mile”, placing fourth and just yards behind the two great milers, Roger Bannister of England and John Landy of Australia.

We all owe an immense debt to Victor for founding Golder Associates and instilling in it values that are the foundation of our culture. The introduction of Victor at the 2002 Karl Terzaghi Lecture included the following:

“Victor was also the driving force behind the company's ownership model. He wanted to build a superior company, and to do this he firmly believed that if the employees were owners, this would be reflected in their attitude towards their clients and product quality……Victor Milligan has only one standard. Whatever he does, it must be the best. A world expert in dam construction, founder of one of the classiest engineering companies in the world, a worldclass athlete, and, I suspect, a world-class family man.”

Victor was President and then Chairman of Golder Associates. He retired in 1994 to individual practice, but continued to act as a Senior Consultant and to serve on many Technical Review panels and Consulting Boards for international clients with world class projects.

Victor continued to travel extensively. His passion and Irish wit at Golder meetings always resulted in standing ovations wherever he spoke.

Although it is true that Victor was the heart and soul of Golder Associates, the culture he founded and embedded in the company strongly lives on.

He is survived by his wife Donna, and sons Jeffrey and Michael (wife Bobbi) and his grandson Alexander to whom we all offer our sincere condolences.

Professor J E Morison (1912-2007)

Dr. J.E. Morison, later to become Honorary Professor of Histopathology, died on 5^th September, 2007 aged 95, after a short illness. To all his colleagues he was familiarly known as ‘John Edgar’. He gave outstanding service to the Ulster Medical Society, acting as editor of the Ulster Medical Journal for 32 years (1952-1984). Professor D.A.D. Montgomery was his co-editor from 1975-1984. In his review of “The Editors of the UMJ” (Ulster Med J 2006 January 75 (1) 5-10) Professor David Hadden has commented on how the journal prospered under his guidance, becoming internationally recognised “with citations in Current Contents as well as the Index Medicus, the predecessor of Medline”. His broad knowledge of pathology helped greatly in the assessment of the worthiness of submitted articles. He was a stickler for the use of good English and grammar, often by himself undertaking major rewriting if he considered the basic content worthwhile. In 1974-1975 he became President of the Ulster Medical Society and in 1979 was made an Honorary Fellow. He also valued his Honorary Fellowships of the Ulster Surgical Club and the Ulster Obstetric Society. He was a founder member of the Paediatric Pathology Club in 1955 which evolved into the Paediatric Pathology Society in 1962.

He was born in Banbridge in 1912 and educated at Banbridge Academy. In 1929 he entered the Medical Faculty of Queen’s University, where he pursued a distinguished undergraduate career graduating in 1935, MB.BCh.BAO with Honours and First Place Scholarship. In 1937 he joined the University Department of Pathology as a research assistant and was made lecturer in 1942. His theses earned an MD with gold medal in 1940 and a DSc in 1951. Despite heavy teaching and diagnostic work, he published many papers in pathology and bacteriology. It was at this time that he became interested in the pathology of the neonatal period and was awarded a Rockerfeller Travelling Fellowship to Harvard Medical School at Boston Children’s Hospital (1946-1947).Returning to Belfast he was appointed Reader and admitted to the pre-NHS visiting staff of the Royal Victoria Hospital. Undoubtedly his most outstanding academic contribution was his authorship of the pioneering book “Foetal and Neonatal Pathology” first published in 1951 with new editions in 1963 and 1971. These were translated into Italian, Spanish and Japanese. Thereafter, wherever in the world Queen’s graduates travelled, they were amazed by how John Edgar’s book was regarded as a unique masterpiece in the field of neonatal pathology, which had placed Belfast firmly on the international map. In 1960 his international reputation was borne out by an invitation from the British Council to undertake a ten week visit to Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil, where there was an awakening interest in perinatal problems. His contacts in North America were maintained by visits and he acted as Guest Professor at Illinois University in Chicago.

In 1954 he resigned his Readership in the University to become an NHS consultant histopathologist, based in the Central Laboratory on the City Hospital site. For more than ten years he provided a superb single-handed postal biopsy service to the rural district hospitals in Northern Ireland and even found time to travel to these hospitals to perform autopsies on the more puzzling cases. Based on his encyclopaedic knowledge, his reports were noteworthy for their detailed advice on the treatment and prognosis of the rarer diseases. The clinicians recognised that in John Edgar they had an intellectual friend to whom they could always turn for help. This was of particular importance in the pre-1960 era before the establishment of medical libraries in the provincial hospitals. It was not until 1965 that he acquired the able support of another pathologist, Dr. Dorothy Hayes, who became his co-consultant in 1971. Together, with the help of highly skilled technical staff, they coped with an enormous workload which grew to 24000 surgical biopsies per year, prior to laboratory decentralisation in the early 1970s and the setting up of separate laboratories in the major provincial hospitals. A shortage of pathology trainees delayed his retirement until 1984 when he was seventy-two. He was awarded an OBE for his services to medicine.

His interests included travel, gardening, photography, collecting antique Irish glass and restoring old furniture. He leaves a wife, Ellen, three children and six grandchildren.

Bill Morrison – playwright, director, producer, actor, screenwriter and former Chair of the Writers’ Guild died 7 December in Liverpool after a sudden illness. He was 71. Many people in the Guild and the wider world of writing and the theatre will mourn his loss.

Bill was widely known for his work, much of which dealt with the troubles of his native Northern Ireland, and for his involvement with the Everyman in Liverpool, among other theatres. But the Guild also knew him as a strong leader, able to focus his experience and intellect on guiding his union through some troubles of its own.

Guild President David Edgar writes:

Bill Morrison's death is a loss to the theatre (for which he not only wrote but also acted and directed), to television and radio, to the Writers' Guild and indeed to the principle of writers' unionisation.

I met him in the late 1970s when we were both founder members of the Theatre Writers' Union, which collaborated with the Guild in negotiating the first minimum-terms agreements for writers in the British theatre. Bill remained a stalwart TWU activist, and was a key figure - firm but wise - in the sometimes tortuous and occasionally tempestuous negotiations for the TWU to join the Guild. Following a successful merging in 1997, Bill went on to the Guild executive and was its chair from 2001 to 2003.

His career as a writer began in the late 1960s. Abandoning his university subject of law in order to go on the stage, Bill quickly refocussed his attention on to writing, undertaking writing residencies at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent and the Liverpool Everyman, for which he wrote his hugely successful black farce about the Northern Ireland troubles, Flying Blind, which was revived at the Royal Court in London, produced off-Broadway and then around the world.

Another comedy about the land of his birth (though in this case set in Liverpool), Scrap!, was one of the plays produced under a rare period of writer power in the theatre. Facing closure in 1981, the Liverpool Playhouse Board appointed Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale, Chris Bond and Bill as joint artistic directors. A not always easy collaboration nonetheless saved the theatre, produced premiere productions of plays by Jimmy McGovern, Claire Luckham, Nell Dunn and Adrian Henri, and Willy Russell's legendarily successful Blood Brothers. After Russell and Bleasdale left, Bill carried on as joint artistic director until 1985, and as a board member till 1991. In 1993 he returned to the theme of the Irish troubles with his most considerable stage project, a three-play family drama beginning with partition in the 1920s and ending in the present, directed by Nick Kent at the Tricycle.

Bill also wrote widely for television, his best-known single plays being Shergar, Force of Duty and A Safe House, a play about the wrongful imprisonment of the Maguire family in the 1970s. His radio work, much of it produced by the formidable John Tydeman, includes an innovative two-part adaptation of Crime and Punishment and a series of five Raymond Chandler novels, as well as many original plays.

Bill will also be remembered as a staunch defender of the theatre (particularly in Liverpool), as a community writer (bringing victims of IRA bombings together on both sides of the Irish sea) and as a trade unionist. His period as chair of the Guild saw difficult negotiations with the BBC and conflict with the Guild's partners, as well as the appointment of Bernie Corbett as General Secretary. His role in the expansion of the Guild's remit to cover all theatre writers is also a lasting legacy.

Bill had been combatting illness for some years, but had been improving over the last two, before a sudden rupture of the oesophagus caused his death last Wednesday. His final public engagement was the launch of a book about the first 100 years of the Liverpool Playhouse, to which he made such an important contribution. His partner, Ann Bates, is a drama teacher with whom Bill worked in his latter years, and he also leaves a daughter (Tilly) and a son (Patrick). He will be missed by them, but also by us.

Guild Treasurer Rupert Creed writes:

Bill Morrison was an accomplished writer for stage, radio and television, and his prolific output across a wide range of platforms was informed by his experience, initially as a professional actor, and subsequently as director and producer. His skill as a writer was embedded in his practical experience of the collaborative process of production- be it in theatre, radio or television.

Bill was born in Ballymoney, N.Ireland in January 1940 and studied Law at Belfast Queens University. He worked as an actor in Belfast, Dublin and London. By 1969 he was Resident Playwright at the Victoria Theatre Stoke on Trent under Peter Cheeseman. His work for radio was as prolific as his work for the stage, both as writer and Radio Drama Producer with the BBC in Belfast from 1975-6. During this time and after, he wrote and adapted over 25 plays for BBC Radio 3, 4 and the World Service, including all of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels. He also wrote extensively for television, including Potatohead Blues, Shergar, A Safe House, and Force of Duty.

Bill’s association with theatre in his adopted city of Liverpool is legendary. He was Resident Writer at the Liverpool Everyman 1977-79, and his play Flying Blind’ transferred to the Royal Court London and to New York. The play was translated into six languages and produced in 10 countries. In the 1980s he was Artistic Director of the Liverpool Playhouse – a member of the Gang of Four alongside Alan Bleasdale, Chris Bond and Willy Russell – during a period of intense creativity both within the city and beyond. Less well known is the work Bill undertook for the benefit of all writers young and old. He was a founding Board member then Chair of the Merseyside Young People’s Theatre, a founding member and first Chair of the Theatre Writers' Union, and Chair of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain from 2000-03. He oversaw the amalgamation of the TWU into the Writers' Guild, ensuring that the principles of grass-root consultation with writers through regional branches, was carried through into the Guild’s revised structure.

I had the privilege of being Deputy Chair with Bill during this period, and know at first-hand how skilled he was at engaging and motivating people in a spirit of genuine partnership and collaboration. He steered the Guild through a difficult period of internal division, and was instrumental in securing the appointment of a new General Secretary. He was brilliant at resolving conflicts, whilst equally unafraid of making difficult decisions. He initiated much-needed reforms including broadening the membership base, particularly to encourage young writers new to the profession, but also safeguarding the interests of older members who had served the Guild over many years through his promotion of the Life Membership scheme. Although this element has proved financially unsustainable, it was a testimony to Bill’s unwavering support for all of the Guild’s members - both old and young. He had the ability to lead incisively, whilst at the same time, give space for everyone’s points of view, canvas a broad range of perspectives, and distil all this decisively into a coherent effective policy.

Bill had a huge generosity of spirit, and that spirit will live on in the fond memory of those who knew him and worked with him.

Alexander Muir, BSc Electrical Engineering 1942

Alexander Muir, BSc Electrical Engineering 1942, has died in Berkshire, aged 82. After completing his degree, Alec moved to England to serve in the RAF Signals Branch at West Drayton. He remained in England after the war for a research career with British Telecommunications Research and later with Plessey, both in Taplow, Buckinghamshire.

He is survived by his wife and three children.

John Donall Murphy, LLB 1956 (born 08.04.34, died on 27.02.10)

(Obituary details from Dr. M. Satish Kumar, School of Geography, Archaeology & Palaeoecology, Queen’s University)

John Donall Murphy, known as Donall, died on Saturday 27 February 2010 at his home in Belfast.

Donall studied Law at Queen’s from 1952 to 1956. He graduated in July 1956 with 24 other graduates with a Bachelor of Law. Donall made full use of his time at Queen’s, not only studying law but acting, debating and writing. He became the editor of the student newspaper, The Gown. But it was his passion for rowing that developed after joining Queen’s University Boat Club that tied him to Queen’s.

Back in the 1950’s, Donall was fondly known as “JD” or “Spud Murphy” by his fellow oarsmen.
He rowed to victory many times as a student for QUB including stroking Junior IV of 1954 with Gordon Gray, George Ankatelle, Ian Henderson and coxed by Billy “the kid” Kyle. He was elected Captain of Queen's Boat Club (1954-1955) and introduced a new and highly successful policy of recruiting and training novices. During his captaincy an outstanding novice IV made up of Ian Nelson, Gerry Nickell, Peter Rowan and Kevin MacLaverty (none of whom had been selected for the first boat) emerged to become unbeaten in Ireland.

He was first appointed the Chief Coach of Queen's Boat Club in 1970/1971 by the then Captain, Jon Scourse and took on this role many times during the seventies, eighties and nineties. He helped many winning crews including the Senior VIII of 1976 and the Novice VIII of 1990 and the intermediate IV of 1991. He became the Secretary and later the Captain of Lady Victoria Boat Club. He helped and supported many of the Queen’s graduates who rowed for Lady Victoria, including Iain Kennedy and David Gray and all those who competed at national level and at the Commonwealth games. He was instrumental in opening up the graduate rowing club to all former student rowers at Queens and not just past Captains and Blues Recipients.

He embraced the national and international rowing scene and spent a time as the President of the Ulster Branch of the Irish Amateur Rowing Union (IARU) and later served as Vice President of the Irish Amateur Rowing Union. During the early eighties he coached at Belfast Rowing Club bringing a crew to Henley Royal Regatta and in the mid eighties he was part of the coaching team that introduced the Irish Lightweight rowers on to the international rowing circuit, competing at the World Championships, which included the Queen’s Captain at that time, Neill Brown.

In 2002 he became the Founding Patron of the Boat Club Appeal and along with Geoff Canning, he realised that extra funding was essential if Queen’s rowing was to compete with the best. This appeal was to lay the foundation for the Rowing Academy which was established in Queen’s in 2007 and has set the scene for the excellent Queen’s Senior, Intermediate and Novice Squad of 2009 and 2010.

Both QUB and Lady Victoria Boat Club acknowledged Donall’s support and contribution to the clubs by naming a boat after him in 2002 and providing a guard of honour with their oars as his coffin was carried from St Brigid’s Church. The final word went to Dusty Anderson who made a moving and yet witty tribute to Donall at the Lady Victoria Annual Dinner held on the 5th March 2010.

Donall was a very successful solicitor and after starting out his own law firm he later went into partnership with Nigel Kerr to form Murphy Kerr & Company Solicitors. After Nigel moved on, he was joined in partnership by Ken Nixon. Both personalities complemented each other and Murphy, Kerr & Co continued to grow in strength. Donall touched many of the people he met and worked for. He made the time for his clients, whether they were the man in the street or the CEO of a multinational company, everybody received the same treatment, dedication and compassion. He became known for his sense of fairness, integrity, compassion, his courage and bravery. He was renowned for his wit, his humour, his speeches, his motivational talks and of course, his letters to Counsel and opposing solicitors.

During the 70s he sat as the Law Society Representative on the then Police Authority but in 1979 he resigned along with the trade union representative, Jack Hazzard in protest over the treatment of suspects in Castlereagh Detention Centre. Two years later he attended a meeting at Queen’s, chaired by the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Gardiner to discuss the administration of justice in Northern Ireland and in particular the use of the Diplock Courts, and confessions obtained under duress. From this meeting held in 1981 he became one of the founding committee members of CAJ, the Committee for the Administration of Justice in Northern Ireland. Donall spoke out about the need for police accountability and a bill of rights long before others even thought about it. Former CAJ Director, Martin O’Brien, said of Donall:

‘Donall was instrumental in CAJ being awarded the Council of Human Rights Prize in 1998.The organisation is only in the strong position it is in today thanks to Donall’s efforts...he was a champion of the underdog.’

There were many other organisations that he was a member of and helped both in a professional and personal capacity including the Ulster Sports Council, the Ulster Arts Club, the Gaelic League, the Belfast Boat Club, St Malachy’s Old Boys and the Queen’s Graduate Association. He was awarded a badge of honour by the Red Cross in recognition of his service to the charity.

Donall was quite the “Renaissance” man with a love of the law and science, a passion for music and sport and a fine appreciation of and supporter of the arts. In 2009, the same year as the publication of the Ryan Report, Donall Murphy was one of the executive producers on the award winning film ‘Beyond the Fire’, which highlighted relevant issues. It premiered at the Queen’s Film Theatre on the 26th June 2009.

Donall supported his wife in her role as President of the Irish Association for Social, Cultural and Economic Relations and took pride in the achievements of his family. He was a loving husband and family man.

Donall is survived by his wife Professor Pauline Murphy and daughters Emer, Maeve and Grainne and son Donall Og.

Henry Graham Stanley Murray, formerly Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Virology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1983 – 1991 (died 20 February 2005)

(Obituary by John R Noble)

Graham Murray was born in Belfast in 1928.He was educated at Inchmarlo Preparatory School, Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Queen’s University Belfast where he qualified MB BCh in 1951.

On qualifying he chose to have a career in hospital medicine.He was soon attracted by the more scientific aspects of his work and this led him to pursue a career in virology for which he trained in the Belfast City and Royal Victoria Hospitals, Belfast.In 1961 he gained his MD in Virology.

In the same year he was appointed Assistant Virologist to the Lister Institute, London.Six years later he was Head of the Department of Virus Vaccines, where his improved methods greatly increased the production of smallpox vaccine.He was recognised by the World Health Organisation as an expert on smallpox vaccine.During his time at the Lister he was appointed Honorary Lecturer to London University.

When the Department of Virus Vaccines closed in 1973, he moved to the Public Health Laboratory at the Central Middlesex Hospital.Ten years later he was appointed Senior Lecturer in Virology and Honorary Consultant to the Prince of Wales Hospital in the Chinese University of Hong Kong.As the first person to be appointed to this post he was responsible for the organisation and teaching of virology and setting up and supervising clinical virology laboratories.He carried out this work with particular enthusiasm as it provided him with the opportunity to put in practice ideas which he had previously developed.

A major coronary infarct in 1991 brought early retirement and he returned to his home in Eastbourne where he lived quietly for the rest of is life.

His wife, Audrey, is a dentist whom he met when she was a student at Queen’s.They married in 1961 and the birth of their daughter, Caroline, brought them much happiness.

A classical violinist of considerable merit, he was offered a permanent position with the Ulster Orchestra while still in his teenage years which he reluctantly refused in order to study medicine.However, he enjoyed playing chamber music in an ensemble for many years.His knowledge and repertoire of classical music was extensive.

He died suddenly at home on 20th February 2005, a week before his 77th birthday.He is survived by his wife, daughter and three grandchildren.

Graham will be remembered by his many colleagues and friends as an innovative and widely respected virologist and for his absolute integrity, kindliness, sense of humour and outstanding musical ability.

Roisin Mussen, BA 2002 (died October 2006)

Roisin Mussen (27), from Hilltown died suddenly in the United States on 6 October 2006. Roisin graduated from Queen's with a BA in Politics in 2002, and after securing a job with drinks company St Brendan's moved to Seattle to live and work.

She had worked in the States as part of her degree and had also volunteered at Camp America. She traveled the world, including living in a Kibbutz in Israel, and became the youngest person to reach the position of international division manager with Luxco, overseeing the distribution of major drinks labels into Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada and South America.

She is survived by her parents Ciaran and Rosaleen, siblings Garrett, Fionula and Ciaran Og and her wider family circle.

Sir Oliver Napier, LLB 1956 (died 2 July 2011)

(Obituary published in The Telegraph on 2 July 2010)

Sir Oliver Napier, a former leader of Northern Ireland's Alliance party, has died aged 75. Napier co-founded the party in 1970 with a vision of bringing Catholics and Protestants together in defiance of the country's sectarian and political divisions. His political life was characterised by an abhorrence of terrorist violence and a search for cross-community consensus and reconciliation, but it was an uphill struggle. The vision of a Northern Ireland completely at peace and entirely at ease with itself, for which he worked tirelessly, remains to be fulfilled.

He was born in Belfast, where he was educated at St Malachy's College and Queen's University. He obtained a law degree and then joined his father's practice of solicitors.

Napier's roots and values were firmly anchored in the Catholic middle-class of the day. When he decided to enter the political fray during the early period of the Troubles in the late 1960s, he chose to join first the Ulster Liberal party and then the New Ulster Movement, both of which were striving to be moderate influences as community division and conflict engulfed Northern Ireland.

Early in 1970, when some Catholic politicians decided to form the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP), Napier declined to join them. He engaged in protracted discussions with the influential West Belfast MP, Gerry Fitt, to persuade him not to do so either.

...

For a full obituary, please visit the the Guardian.

Thomas George Nicholson, BA 1966

Thomas George Nicholson, died suddenly at his home in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada, on November 2, 2008.

George was born in Minterburn, Co Tyrone, on 9th October 1943, the eldest son of Thomas and Connie Nicholson. After attending Minterburn P. E. School, he moved to Dungannon Royal School, and from there to Queen’s University, Belfast. He graduated from Queen’s in 1966, with a BA in Geography. In the summer of 1966, he emigrated by tramp steamer to Canada, where he earned his MA at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, followed by his PhD at Penn State University, USA.

Aged 65, George had very recently retired after 30 years working for Niagra Region Planning Department, retiring as Associate Director, Policy/Implementation, having spent much of the last number of years developing the Greater Niagara Circle Route, a recreational facility which will be a lasting memorial to him.

Outside work, he was an avid cyclist, often seen riding the trails of Niagara, and had recently cycled the Waterfront Trail from Niagara to the Quebec Border. He also had a keen interest in both Irish and Philatelic history, combining these with an extensive collection of postcards from the Irish Home Rule period, with which he had won prizes at many philatelic exhibitions in North America.

A funeral service to celebrate George's life, attended by a large and representative congregation, was held in St. Thomas Anglican Church, 99 Ontario St. St. Catherine’s, on November 6, 2008, at 11am, followed by private cremation. He is deeply missed by all his family connection, his wide circle of friends, and his former work colleagues.

Pre-deceased by his parents, George is survived in Canada by his wife Wynne, sons Scott and Tyrone, and in Northern Ireland by his brothers Jim, Harry and Mervyn, and his six nieces.

Sir David Orr, former Chancellor of Queen's (died 2 February 2008)

A former Chancellor of Queen’s, Sir David Orr, died on 2 February 2008 aged 85.

Sir David was installed as the Seventh Chancellor of the University on 8 May 1992, a position he held until his retirement in 1999. A law graduate of Trinity College Dublin David Orr made his career as a distinguished industrialist, eventually becoming Chairman of Unilever and also of Inchcape plc; he later served as Chairman of the British Council.

For a full obituary please visit the Daily Telegraph.

Maureen Owen, BSc 1948 (died 5 April 2011)

(published by the Bone Research Society)

It is very sad to report that Maureen Owen, a pioneering researcher and leader in the field of bone biology, died peacefully in Oxford aged 83 on 5th April 2011. Maureen was an Honorary Member of the Bone Research Society and was an extraordinary mentor to many. Throughout her life she showed great kindness and encouragement to all her colleagues. Many benefited from her tuition and expertise over the years and she instilled the joy of science to all those who were fortunate to work with her in Oxford as students, researchers or sabbatical visitors throughout her career.

Maureen was born in Northern Ireland and gained a first class B.Sc. Hons degree in Experimental Physics at Queen’s University, Belfast in 1948. Following a year as a Scientific Officer at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, she gained a DPhil Studentship in Nuclear Physics in the University of Oxford at the Clarendon Laboratory and obtained her DPhil degree in 1952. From 1952 to 1958, with a one-year sabbatical break at the Donner Laboratory for Biophysics at the University of California in Berkeley, she was a Graduate Assistant in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford. In 1958 she joined the Bone Seeking Isotopes Research Unit as a Member of the Medical Research Council Staff, with Dame Janet Vaughan as Honorary Director. Under Dame Janet’s mentorship Maureen’s lifelong interest in bone tissue began. There was a one-year break in 1962 when she accompanied her husband (John, also a nuclear physicist) to Long Island, New York, where she was a Research Fellow at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Following Dame Janet’s retirement, Maureen became a member of the MRC External Scientific Staff and head of the bone research team at the Churchill Hospital Oxford. The MRC Bone Research Laboratory moved to the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in 1974 and she retired in 1993. A Bone and Tooth Society meeting was organised at Keble College and the University Museum in Oxford in July 1993 to mark the occasion. Her many international friends and colleagues attended to celebrate Maureen’s career and made this a very memorable and enjoyable meeting.

Maureen's numerous publications clearly established her as an expert in the field of bone tissue research. Her scientific achievements were many and varied. These began with her work on bone uptake of radionuclides and radiation dosimetry that naturally followed from her Nuclear Physics degree background. She quickly learnt cell biology and developed highly novel techniques using quantitative autoradiography to investigate the formation and metabolism of bone matrix, osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Her remarkable insight led her to the premonition that the progenitor cells of musculoskeletal stromal tissues would be central to future investigations of bone diseases and their treatments and to normal musculoskeletal physiology. She performed the pioneering studies on this subject and made seminal contributions to understanding the key role of marrow stromal stem cells. Based on her knowledge of studies by the Russian scientist Alexander Friedenstein, working in Moscow, Maureen framed the concept of the marrow stromal cell system. She and Alexander became firm friends and active collaborators, and together they laid the foundations and principles of “marrow stromal stem cell biology” (their preferred terminology) that endure today through their publications.

Maureen was a major player in all the scientific societies relating to work in the bone field. She was secretary of the British Bone and Tooth Society (now the British Bone Research Society) from 1975-79 inclusive, and acted as the founding secretary of the European Calcified Tissue Society. She was also deeply involved in the Advisory Board of the triennial Parathyroid Hormone Conferences. With this group she helped to organise the highly successful "Parathyroid Conference 1974” at St Catherines’s College, Oxford. She was involved in the evolution of this group to become the International Conference on Calcium-Regulating Hormones and eventually the International Bone and Mineral Society, from whom she received the Elsevier award in 1998. She was also on the editorial boards of all major bone journals, including Bone, Bone and Mineral, Journal of Bone and Mineral Research and Calcified Tissue International. After her retirement she continued to regularly attend lectures and events at the University of Oxford, often arriving by bicycle, and also remained a prominent figure at national and international meetings. Her warmth and friendly nature will be greatly missed by all who knew her. We offer our deepest sympathy to her daughter, Stephanie, and son-in-law and her three grandchildren.

Professor Frank Pantridge (died 26 December 2004)

(The Guardian, by Bill Duff, Thursday January 6, 2005 )

Professor Frank Pantridge, who has died aged 88, made a significant contribution to medicine in general and cardiology in particular.

Since the mid-1950s it was known that thousands of deaths occurred after a coronary attack due to ventricular fibrillation, a total disorganisation of the heart's normal rhythm. This could be corrected via the application of a short but massive electric shock to the heart, and many hospitals equipped themselves with mains defibrillators. Pantridge pointed out that since two-thirds of deaths occurred in the first hour after the onset of an attack, it would make more sense to take the defibrillator to the patient by way of a specialist "heart ambulance".

So in the winter of 1965, at the Royal Victoria hospital (RVH), Belfast, Pantridge, with colleagues Alfred Mawhinney, a technician, and John Geddes, a senior house officer, converted a mains defibrillator to operate from two car batteries in the back of an old ambulance. Thus was born the world's first mobile defibrillator, although, from the beginning, Pantridge was convinced that it could be reduced in size and made truly hand portable. This it eventually was.

Amazingly, the reaction of the British medical establishment consisted for the most part of disbelief, ridicule and even hostility. It was to be 16 years before the concept of taking the care to the patient was fully accepted. The reaction in America was totally different, and the creation of mobile units was both swift and comprehensive.

Pantridge's contribution to cardiology, however, was far from finished. In the aftermath of a heart attack, depending upon where exactly the attack has occurred, the heart either speeds up or slows down; muscle damage continues to accrue; and blood pressure problems present themselves. Pantridge was first to point out that damage could be minimised and blood pressure stabilised if remedial action was taken as soon as possible to normalise the patient's heart rate. This discovery led to higher survival rates and better quality of life for countless patients ever since.

Pantridge was born in Northern Ireland, on a farm on the outskirts of Hillsborough, Co Down. His father died when he was 10 and his early school days were troubled. He was several times expelled. He completed his secondary education at Friends School, Lisburn, and went up to Queens University, Belfast in 1934. Again his education was marked by trouble with authority, but he graduated very near the top of his year and thus gain a coveted job as a house officer at the RVH.

Almost immediately afterwards, war was declared and Pantridge immediately volunteered. Within days of his arrival in Singapore with the RAMC, Pantridge had fallen out with his superior at the military hospital and was posted to the second battalion of the Gordon Highlanders, then at Changi. When the Japanese attacked, the Gordons were sent north into Malaya, where they conducted a fighting withdrawal all the way back to Singapore. Casualties in the Gordons and a nearby Gurkha unit for whom he also acted as medical officer were heavy and evacuation always difficult, sometimes impossible. Pantridge, in common with other medical officers, ensured that those so severely wounded that they could not be evacuated would never see the enemy.

During the retreat in Johore, Pantridge was wounded and awarded a Military Cross, his citation saying he was "cool under the heaviest fire". Back on Singapore Island, he was devastated when the order to surrender came through. He had been appalled at the incompetence of the civil and military leadership before and during the campaign, but he had fully expected a fight to almost the last man.

Pantridge was incarcerated at Changi before moving north to work on the infamous Burma Siam railway. Of his group of 7,000, only a few hundred survived. Pantridge himself suffered from prolonged and near fatal cardiac beriberi but was possessed of a fanatical will to live. He never forgave the Japanese for what he saw them do to soldiers and civilians alike. Chronic ill health was to dog him for the rest of his life.

Back in Belfast he had to resume his career. Jobs were not easy to come by, but research into cardiac beriberi won him a scholarship to the University of Michigan. When he returned in 1949, he introduced surgeons to the operation of mitral valvotomy, from which over 2,500 patients benefited. In 1951, he was appointed consultant physician at the RVH and developed a large and reputable cardiac unit. He remained there until his retirement in 1984.

Frank Pantridge was both a simple and a complex man. Unquestionably focused and brilliant, he brought about unique advances in cardiology. He could be cantankerous, gruff, even rude, and yet witty and generous. For him to like someone he had to respect them, and he could then be a very loyal friend.

That he was not rewarded with a knighthood was probably due to his refusal to conform and his ability to fall out with anyone in authority. The title of his 1989 autobiography, An Unquiet Life, was entirely appropriate, and he did not marry. Apart from his native Northern Ireland, his greatest recognition came from the US, where he was showered with awards.

James Frank Pantridge, doctor, born October 3 1916; died December 26 2004.

(The Daily Telegraph, by Susan Sontag)

Professor Frank Pantridge, the cardiologist who died on Boxing Day aged 88, developed the portable defibrillator, which has saved the lives of countless cardiac patients over the past 40 years.

In the 1950s it was said that coronary heart disease had reached epidemic proportions, and in the early 1960s hospital care units were initiated in North America. Pantridge, who was based at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, doubted the value of these, since epidemiological data had shown that the majority of coronary deaths were sudden, and thus occurred outside hospital.

It was known that most coronary deaths resulted from ventricular defibrillation, a disturbance of the heart rhythm which might be corrected by the application of an electric shock of momentary duration across the chest.

Pantridge suggested that, if the problem lay outside hospital, ventricular defibrillation should be corrected where it occurred, in the workplace, the home, the street or in an ambulance. However, removal of ventricular defibrillation required a defibrillator; and the available machines operated only in hospital from the mains electricity supply.

In 1965 he produced the first "portable" defibrillator. It operated from car batteries and weighed 70 kilos. Descendants of that clumsy contraption are now used countless times daily throughout the world saving many lives.

Pantridge installed the portable defibrillator in an ambulance, thus creating the pre-hospital coronary care unit known as the Pantridge Plan. This plan was used to manage President Lyndon Johnson when he suffered a heart attack while on a visit to Virginia in 1972.

Pantridge was labelled the "father of emergency medicine" and his Plan was rapidly adopted in America and elsewhere. An exception was the United Kingdom, even though an editorial in the Lancet in 1957 had stated that Pantridge and his colleague at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, John Geddes, had revolutionised emergency medicine.

In 1990, nearly 25 years after Pantridge had installed a defibrillator in an ambulance in Belfast, Kenneth Clarke, the then Secretary of State for Health, announced that £38 million was to be made available to equip all front-line ambulances in England with defibrillators. The number of unnecessary deaths during the 24 years' delay elicited no comment.

James Francis Pantridge (always known as Frank) was born on October 3 1916 on the outskirts of the village of Hillsborough, Co Down. His forebears were small landowners. He was educated at the local Friends School and graduated in Medicine from The Queen's University of Belfast in 1939.

On the declaration of war, he immediately reported to the recruiting office (there was no conscription in Northern Ireland), and was posted to the Far East where he became medical officer of an infantry battalion. During the battle that preceded the fall of Singapore, he received an immediate award of the Military Cross; the citation stated that "this officer worked unceasingly under the most adverse conditions of continuous bombing and shelling and was an inspiring example to all with whom he came in contact. He was absolutely cool under the heaviest fire ".

Captured at the fall of Singapore, Pantridge spent much of his captivity in the slave labour camps on the Siam-Burma Railway, including some months in the notorious "death camp", Tanbaya, on the Siam-Burma border. He survived the usually fatal cardiac beriberi, an experience which may have initiated his special interest in heart disease. The fall of Singapore, the impregnable fortress, left its mark. He was to say that never again would he have any confidence in those who were in control of affairs, and the only politician for whom he had any regard was Harry S Truman; he believed that Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb in August 1945 undoubtedly saved the lives of the POWs.

Back in Belfast at the end of 1945, the only appointment he could obtain was that of part-time supernumerary lecturer in the university's department of pathology. However, he obtained a scholarship to the University of Michigan, where he worked with F N Wilson, then the world authority on electrocardiography.

Pantridge returned to Belfast in 1950, and was appointed Physician to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where he remained until his retirement in 1982. He quickly established an internationally acclaimed cardiology unit, recognised not only in the erudite medical journals but also in the North American lay press; there were articles in Time magazine and the New York Times. Mouth-to-mouth ventilation, with chest compression to maintain the circulation (the technique known as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR), aroused much interest in the North American lay press in the 1960s.

While Pantridge supported CPR he was well aware of its limitations, knowing that the longer ventricular fibrillation had been present, the less likely long-term survival would result from its removal. The aim, he insisted, should be immediate correction of ventricular fibrillation.

He also maintained that any lay individual who could perform CPR was capable of using a defibrillator; and a defibrillator should be beside every fire extinguisher since life was more important than property. He was aware that the size of the apparatus had to be reduced, and, using a miniature capacitor manufactured for Nasa, in 1968 he designed an instrument weighing only 3 kilos.

It was argued that a defibrillator in the hands of a lay individual might be used when not necessary; the citizen who had fainted or was drunk might be given a potentially dangerous shock. Thus, Pantridge suggested that the miniature defibrillator should incorporate a fail-safe mechanism like the safety catch on a pistol. This would ensure that the instrument would not deliver a shock unless the lethal arrhythmia, ventricular fibrillation, was present.

The defibrillator for implantation in the chest developed by Mirowski, in Baltimore, had just such characteristics. Pantridge thought that a similar circuit should operate from the chest surface, and he discussed this with Mirowski on a train journey between Ghent and Amsterdam in 1976. Mirowski was adamant that it was impossible, but Pantridge persisted, and eventually the automatic external defibrillator (AED) emerged.

One of the important dividends of a pre-hospital coronary care unit was the observation that, in the very early phases of the coronary attack, there was a high incidence of abnormalities of the heart rate and blood pressure. The correction of these abnormalities resulted in a much lower incidence of cardiogenic shock and failure of the heart as a pump. In 1970 Pantridge postulated that early appropriate treatment would limit the extent of heart muscle damage. This proved to be so: in 1985 Charlie Wilson, also in Northern Ireland, found that, among patients under 65, the early initiation of treatment reduced mortality by 38 per cent.

Frank Pantridge was appointed CBE in 1978. He was the author of The Acute Coronary Attack (1975), and a volume of autobiography, An Unquiet Life (1989). His hobby was salmon fishing.

He was unmarried.

(29/12/2004)

Robert Colin Parkhill, BSC (Electrical Engineering) 1961

Robert Colin Parkhill, BSC (Electrical Engineering) 1961, died of cancer on 29 December 2006 at his home Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA, aged 69. Born in Dublin on 10 June 1937, he was educated at Portora Royal School and Methodist College, Belfast. He rowed for the Queen’s Junior VIII in 1958 when they were Irish Amateur Rowing Union Champions.

Colin began his career as a field engineer with the BBC and RCA (Radio Corporation of America) (Great Britain). He immigrated to the USA in 1965 with his new wife where he continued his career with RCA in Camden, New Jersey as a product engineering specialist for television stations.

He moved to Alexandria, Virginia in 1974 as broadcast sales representative for RCA in Washington DC and Northern Virginia. He continued his career as technical engineer with Phillips Television Systems Inc, BTS, Sony, King Video Associates and Communications Engineering. He was a Member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

Colin is survived by his wife Ann and daughters Caroline and Diane, brothers Brian and Alan and sister Anne. His greatest passion was flying and he proudly earned his private pilot’s licence at the age of 57.

Professor Ian Campbell Roddie CBE, BSc 1950 (1928 - 2011)

Ian Roddie, Dunville Professor of Physiology, Queen’s University, Belfast (1964 -1982), who died on 28th May 2011, was an innovative physiologist whose classical work on peripheral vascular dynamics and lymphatic circulation is still widely quoted. A lucid and inspirational teacher he was also a deep thinker on medical education and his pioneering work on instruction and assessment methodology stimulated timely debate and remains significant. Not least, he was an efficient enabling administrator and a decisive executive.

Ian Campbell Roddie was born on 1st December 1928, the third (of four) medical sons of a local Methodist minister. He entered Queen’s from Methodist College, Belfast in 1946 graduating MB, BCh, BAO in 1953 having previously taken a BSc in Physiology (1950, 1st class honours), and won the Malcolm Exhibition (1951) and the McQuitty Scholarship (1953) at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, the major teaching hospital associated with Queen’s. After house appointments at the Royal Victoria he joined Professor David Greenfield’s talented research team at Queen’s working with J.T. Shepherd (later to be chairman of the Mayo Foundation), R.F. Whelan (later to be Vice-Chancellor of the Universities of Western Australia and then of Liverpool), and W.E. Glover (later to be Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales) into the nervous control of peripheral blood vessels which Greenfield and his predecessor in the Dunville chair, Henry Barcroft, had pioneered. This led to many publications, an MD (with Gold Medal, 1957), a Harkness Commonwealth Fund Fellowship to the University of Washington, Seattle (1960-1) and a DSc (QUB, 1962) on his return. When he succeeded Greenfield in 1964 he was leading major research into the effect of mental stress and thermoregulation on the peripheral circulation which he would soon extend to include the effects of synthetic cardio-vascular-active drugs and the mechanisms of the circulation of lymph.

The Dunville Chair brought the added responsibilities of being head of a large and active department. Roddie at once identified, analysed and prioritised these, decided courses of action for each, and resolutely followed them. A lucid, disciplined and popular lecturer he was at ease with students and they with him (who elected him President of the Belfast Medical Students Association, their ultimate imprimatur of popularity and respect), and juniors who were not were helped to be so. Faced with the paucity of rigorous testing of the merits of long-favoured teaching and assessment methods and those coming into vogue, with his close colleague, WFM Wallace, he published in 1971 the ground-breaking Multiple Choice Questions in Human Physiology: With Answers and Comments (6th edition, 2004; Italian (1978), Japanese (1982) and paper-back (1978) editions), and later many challenging appraisals in the Lancet (1984; ii: 802-3; 860-1; 918; 973-4. 1030-1) and elsewhere. He encouraged the research aspirations of junior colleagues working for a doctoral degree and also of medical, dental and science undergraduates in their final honours BSc year, supervised them closely, imbued them with something of his infectious enthusiasm, and often involved them as co-authors in his own studies which produced some 70 papers many of them in the influential Journal of Physiology, as well as chapters in books. Knowing the importance of wide subject explanation and promotion within the profession he published in 1971 the popular Physiology for Practitioners (2nd edit., 1975; Italian (1974) and German (1977) editions), and 1975, with WFM Wallace, the near-mandatory text-book for conscientious professors who truly have something to say, The Physiology of Disease (Spanish edition, 1978).

Roddie was well aware of the dangers of professional and academic parochialism and worked to counter them. He was a frequent reader of papers to the Physiological Society and encouraged his staff to do likewise, was chairman (1958-8) of its Committee, a Sherrington Lecturer, and on retirement an honorary member, and served on other national professional bodies within the discipline, notably the Physiological Systems Board of the MRC. A sabbatical was taken at the University of New South Wales (1983-4), time was spent in Shinsu University, Matsumoto, Japan, and at other Far Eastern centres, and he was a sometime external examiner at all the Irish medical schools, eleven in Britain (including all the Colleges of Surgeons where he examined for the Fellowship), and six abroad, four being in the Middle or Near East and two in Africa. Closer to home he supported all-Ireland academic and professional bodies even when this was not general in Northern Ireland, mainly through the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, to which he read many papers, was awarded its Conway Bronze Medal and was elected President of the Biological Sciences section and then of the Academy itself (1985-8). He became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and in 1978 was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy.

In 1976 Roddie was elected (part-time) Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Queen’s for five years bringing an added work-load, considerable in the wake of Todd, and other, Reports, which involved radical changes in the undergraduate syllabus and in postgraduate education and training; and since Queen’s had the only medical school in Northern Ireland there was close involvement with the Northern Ireland health service. As well as regional committees he was now a member of the Medical Sub-Committee of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, and when Sir John Henry Biggart died in 1979 he replaced him on the General Medical and Dental Councils. Always a decisive departmental head he showed himself just as capable a Faculty one and also an enabling administrator, so valuable in the university advisory and command structure since he was intent on identifying and instigating courses of action rather than just reaching conclusions! Shortly after his term expired he went on a sabbatical (1983-4) to Australia and the Far East returning with an enthusiasm for the developing medical schools and sufficiently refreshed to accept appointment, in 1984, as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Queen’s (the other was Professor (later Sir) Colin Campbell, shortly to be Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham), a formidable duo of assistants for any Vice-Chancellor. During all this period he continued to publish original research papers in physiology and to contribute to the debates on student selection, medical education and its assessment, proving himself to be a challenging, albeit thoughtful and eloquent, controversialist.

Roddie retired in 1987 aged 58. Always a very private person and difficult to get close to, he shared his thoughts and decisions only with those who needed to know them; and almost unnoticed he cleared his office over a week-end and went abroad where he had developed interests and forged contacts, first as visiting professor to the Chinese University of Hong Kong (1998-90) and then as Deputy Medical Director (1991-4) and Director of Medical Education (1990-4) at the King Khalid National Guard Hospital, Jeddah. Acting through consultancies with the World Bank (Washington), and the Asian Development Bank (Manila), and other agencies and governments, he advised on medical school and cognate developments in reputedly some 30 countries as diverse as Guatemala, Vietnam, Poland and South Africa. He was appointed CBE in 1987.

Roddie’s extra-mural interests are listed in the Medical Directory as “reading, writing and travel”: this seems about right but could be qualified by adding “confined mainly to medical and associated matters”. In retirement, however, he devoted much of his time to research into his own family history which lead to the publication of detailed and affectionate accounts of the two families drawn together by his parents’ marriage, the Wilsons of Straid, Co. Antrim, and the Roddies of Binroe, Co Donegal. He had also served in the T & AVR (1951-68) retiring as OC Medical Sub-Unit, Queens’ University, to the rank of Major; was a member of several local committees associated with civil defence and advising on biological engineering; and was President of the Belfast Association of University Teachers (1974-6). His first wife died leaving one son and three daughters, he had one son and one daughter by his second wife (marriage dissolved), and he married his third wife on his retirement in 1987.

Peter Froggatt | Mary Roddie | William Wallace

Noel Rankin, BA 1956 (died on Christmas day 2010)

(Obituary by his wife Joyce)

Noel Rankin befriended two elderly members of a film club in Cannes – Luis Buñuel and Pablo Picasso.

My husband, Noel Rankin, who has died aged 76, was a journalist, idealist, atheist, linguist and socialist. He could recite Russian poetry, sing a bawdy Spanish bar song, revelled in Irish rugby and delighted in speaking in his Ulster Scots dialect while drinking a glass of Bushmills. He spoke French, Spanish, Russian, Greek and just a bit of Polish and German. He was great craic.

We met in 1982 in Argentina at the start of the Falklands war. The BBC sent us both to work undercover in case the "British" got kicked out. I was a freelance American TV broadcaster from Washington. He posed as an Irish professor of linguistics from Trinity College Dublin, but in reality co-ordinated the BBC's Buenos Aires coverage.

Each day the Argentinian junta's communiques would announce the number of Sea Harriers they had "destroyed". Noel was gleeful in his translations, knowing that they were claiming to have shot down more Harriers than were built. Ever the impartial newsman, he also took pride when Margaret Thatcher deemed the Buenos Aires coverage "too objective".

After "pond-hopping" for 15 years, Noel and I were finally married in New York in 1997.

Born near Bushmills, Co Antrim, Noel spent his youth living in a thatched cottage with no electricity, running water or indoor lavatory. His father, Matthew, was a sergeant major in the Royal Irish Rifles, and a gardener who instilled in Noel a love for his native land. His mother, Martha, an avid reader, encouraged his love of words.

The youngest of three brothers, Noel always carried a certain sadness. In May 1944 his eldest brother, William, was killed on a bombing run to Germany. The middle brother, Ian, left to travel the world at an early age and disappeared without trace in 1973.

From Bushmills grammar, Noel was awarded a scholarship to Queen's University Belfast. After graduating, he travelled through Franco's Spain teaching English. He moved to France, attending the Sorbonne in Paris, and then taught English in Cannes. There he joined the local film club and befriended two elderly members, acting as an occasional translator because their French was heavily accented – Luis Buñuel and Pablo Picasso.

In 1962 Noel joined the BBC's monitoring service and then moved to BBC TV news as a subeditor, editor and field producer. He retired in 1995 but continued to write, translate, travel and mentor young journalists.

In 2008 he was diagnosed with bowel cancer. On one occasion he survived an operation against the odds, and just as doctors were warning he was unlikely to make it, there came a loud, strong voice: "I'm still here." On Christmas Eve he was taken ill for the last time.

Noel is survived by me and his cats, Tarapuss and Snapper.

Warwick Richardson, died 8 May 2006

(An Appreciation by Rodney England)

Warwick, who was known to everyone in the Queen’s University Association in London, began at Queen’s in 1948 after completing his National Service. He graduated in 1954 with a B.Sc. in Naval Architecture. He was one of the last graduates in Naval Architecture as the course was discontinued shortly after this. He had a long and rewarding career in Marine Architecture and became a Fellow of the Institute of Naval Architects. If you mentioned to Warwick that you were going on a cruise he immediately wanted to know the name of the ship. He could tell you the tonnage, where and when it was built and even if he thought it seaworthy.

He had a passion for classical music including baroque and opera, had an excellent bass voice and was a member of the St. Bartholomew’s Choral Society and the Wagner Society for many years.

He joined the Queen’s University Association on graduating and was eventually elected to the QUAL Council. He was a conscientious member attending all their meetings making sensible and constructive contributions to their discussions. In the late 1990s he became its functions organiser and his position was ratified and recognised in 2001 when he was elected by Council to Functions Secretary.

In 2003 when the Vice Chancellor and Alumni Office at Queen’s were endeavouring to establish a more formal relationship with the Alumni Associations he took on the formidable task of Membership Secretary. One unforeseen advantage of this was that Warwick knew all the members, their dates of graduation and the recent graduates applying for membership. He knew as Functions Secretary which events they were attending and was always on hand to greet new members and introduce them.

He had a profound knowledge of all potential venues in London for events, their advantages and disadvantages and more importantly their costs. His attention to detail in the organisation of the Annual QUAL dinner was superb and his table plans were a work of art. Throughout he always displayed insuperable optimism, good humour and when the occasion demanded it, considerable tact.

I had the pleasure during my two years as President of the Association of working closely with Warwick and can pay tribute to his unflagging energy, expertise in getting things done and his advice and support.

He married Patricia, whom he met at Queen’s, in 1956 and is survived by her and a daughter, Rosalind and son, Julian.

Ernie Sandford, Bachelor of Arts, 1936 (died on 10 August 2006 aged 93)

(‘Ernie Sandford: A tribute to a distinguished Portrush Journalist’ - Coleraine Today)

Ernie Sandford, known to many friends as Sandy, was born in Portrush in 1913 where he was educated at Coleraine Academical Institution. He proceeded to Queen’s University Belfast and after graduation he joined the Northern Constitution as a reporter.

The younger son of local grocer, Joseph Sandford, Ernie ‘had a distinguished career spanning from local reporter in Coleraine to Reuter’s office in Paris culminating in his appointment as head of press and publicity at the NI Tourist Board’.

During this career he wrote articles on local history, was a member of the amateur dramatic society – Portrush Players and at a stage secretary of the Portrush hockey club.

In the late 1930s Ernie left Coleraine and went on to work for the Belfast Newsletter followed by a move to Fleet Street as sub editor on the Daily Telegraph. He was appointed the Press Association’s first war correspondent and after the War, returned to Fleet Street as chief reporter of the Sunday Chronicle.

Ernie who was 'recognised as one of the most distinguished journalists Northern Ireland has produced’, resigned and moved to France in 1946 where he taught English for two years in a small college on the outskirts of Paris. During his time there, he studied French language & civilisation at the Sorbonne and wrote his first book about a canoe trip from Macon to Lyons.

Following this he joined Reuters as head of their Paris office before going on to become information officer for the Marshall Plan (one such assignment meant that he was present at the historical singing of the Treaty of Rome).

In 1959, Ernie joined the Northern Ireland Governments London Office as publicity officer to the Ministry of Commerce and the Northern Ireland Development Council . Some ten years later, he returned home for his appointment as publicity officer to the Tourist Board.

Although Ernie retired in 1978, he continued to write the guide book Discover Northern Ireland and had articles published in the Coleraine Old Boys’ Association and the Bann Disc (journal of the Coleraine Historical Society).

Ernie is survived by his wife Joyce, daughter Christine and son Patrick.

John P Savage (died May 2003)

(Among a number of obituaries we received for Dr Savage, was the following from his former classmate Brian Lowry MB 1956)

John Savage died just a few days short of his 71st birthday in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. His undergraduate career at Queen's was distinguished by being President of the Student?s Representative Council and also earning a Rugby Blue.

He immigrated to Canada in 1966 and embarked on a career of Family Practice and later Politics. In Family Medicine he was more than just a Doctor treating patients because he widened his horizons into a considerable number of organizations often being the initiator of new programs, for example, establishing a free clinic in a disadvantaged black community area near Halifax. He worked closely with commissions and organizations dealing with alcohol and drug dependency and established the first mainland Nova Scotia Detox Center in Halifax, as well as an evening program for families of drug dependent people. He travelled abroad to help bring medical aid to countries such as Nicaragua and El Salvador and latterly in Niger, West Africa as well as in Gambia.

John Savage was always very heavily involved in community work in providing recreational facilities, medical facilities, educational programs to name just a few. He was elected to the Dartmouth School Board after he could not persuade educators to teach sex education in the school and eventually became Chairman of the School Board, where he was closely involved in developing such a comprehensive program and also in a daily physical exercise program in Dartmouth Schools, which was later adopted by the Province of Nova Scotia.

After his School Board Chairmanship, he became Mayor of Dartmouth and was re-elected on two occasions. From there he went into Provincial Politics and became Leader of the Provincial Liberal Party and subsequently Premier of Nova Scotia in 1993. Although he was clearly a Liberal and a champion of social programs he found that the previous Conservative Government in Nova Scotia had left a considerable deficit and to quote one newspaper report "faced with a spiralling deficit Dr. Savage morphed quickly from socialist spend thrift to fiscal conservative".

When he took office, Nova Scotia had a budget deficit of $617 million, the worst in its history and interest payments on the 8 billion dollar provincial debt were 1 billion dollars a year. The health care system was struggling and the legislature had not held a sitting in 15 months. Government was riven with patronage. John Savage changed things rapidly. He reformed the health system to put more stress on preventive medicine and less on high cost hospital care. He amalgamated municipal governments to make them cheaper and more effective. He brought in a law requiring the legislature to sit twice a year. He made government purchasing fairer and less political and he cut spending so sharply that close to the end of his time as Premier the province brought its first fully balanced budget in 25 years.

More importantly he stopped the practice of packing government departments with friends of the governing parties. The Globe & Mail (Canada's most prominent English speaking newspaper) had an outstanding editorial on him in 1997 and I quote "Congratulations, construction union thugs. Well done, party hacks. Nice job, government trough-feeders. Hats off, in fact, to all those who would like to see Nova Scotia keep on going in the same cozy, corrupt way it used to. You have won a glorious victory. This week, you got rid of the best premier your province has had in a generation. Thanks to you, a good man is gone. The old Nova Scotia lives".

In his lifetime, John received many awards for his medical and community work. These included the YMCA Peace Medal in 1987, the Environmental Award from the Wildlife Association of Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia Red Cross Humanitarian Award, the Queen's Jubilee Medal of Nova Scotia, the Order of Nova Scotia Medal, an Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law from St. Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, a Paul Harris Fellowship Award from Rotary International and just before he died the Order of Canada as well as an Honorary Doctor of Laws from his Alma Mater.

Those of us who were among his classmates at Queen's remember him as being "a right decent man" who was prepared to speak his mind but also was quite open minded about other person's opinions. Clearly, he had a very strong social conscience from an early age which became more prominent as he entered community life in Nova Scotia.

In this he was strongly helped by his wife, Margaret (nee McCartan), whom he met at Queen's and their seven children. Sadly, Margaret predeceased him by only a few months. For most people in Ulster, they probably had no idea of the tremendous impact that John Savage made not only on his community of Dartmouth, and the province of Nova Scotia, but also in the wider world in helping underprivileged people in many ways. The saddest thing is that in trying to be a completely honest politician the people could not take it but his example of a life well lived will be an inspiration not only to his children but to many in his community.

Gordon Meredith Scott, MB BCh BAO (died 22 March 200)

Dr Gordon Meredith Scott of St Thomas, died on Wednesday, March 22, 2006, at the St Thomas-Elgin General Hospital, in his 83rd year. Beloved husband of Rosemary (Wright) Scott and dearly loved father of Sheila Scott of Toronto, Grahame Scott of St Thomas and Moira and her husband Alain Nadeau of Toronto. Loved grandfather of Devon Scott. Predeceased by a brother Colin. Dr Scott was born in England on April 15, 1923 the son of Sir William and Lady Scott. He served during WWII with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry in the 10th Royal Hussars, 2nd Armored Brigade (The Prince of Wales Own Royal Regiment) as Tank Commander. He received the Military Cross for Valour.

Dr Scott graduated from Queen's in 1952 and went to St. Thomas, Ontario in 1954 as a physician and an anaesthetist at the St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital.

Estelle Sharp (died 11 September 2004)

(Obituary by Marie McAuley, Dorothy Eagleson and Peggy Elliott)

Estelle Sharpe MB 1948, died on Saturday 11 September 2004 after a courageous battle with a long illness.

Those of us who knew Dr Estelle Faith (Sharp) have been left with a lasting memory of an outstanding but very private person.

Estelle graduated in Medicine from Queen's University in 1948. After a very short time in General Practice, she specialised in Ophthalmology, firstly working in the Benn Hospital and then transferring to the Royal Victoria when the new Eye Hospital opened in 1964. She was held in great esteem by her colleagues, who valued her friendship as well as her sound medical opinion.

Unfortunately, her husband Norman died when her children were still teenagers. Some years later, however, she was to see both of them rise to the top in their respective professions: Leslie, a psychiatrist of note in Manchester, and Mark, a successful lawyer in London. When her mother became ill she came to live with Estelle, who looked after her for some years until she died.

Her responsibilities now less, Estelle was free to enjoy her many interests - music, art, theatre and literature, and was a constant attendee at all our local cultural centres as well as travelling extensively abroad. She was an avid reader, and was a member of the Linenhall Library, always promoting its cause. She also took part in the activities of the local and national branches of the National Trust and of the Friends of the Museum.

Apart from these leisure activities, she found time to help those less fortunate and worked assiduously for many charities. For several years she was a counsellor at the Samaritans, and also at the Mastectomy Society. After successful heart surgery she joined the Chest Heart and Stroke Association and could be seen standing in the rain and wind collecting for their funds.

Estelle was a hard working member of the committee of the Queen's Women Graduates' Association, and also of the University Women's Club. Estelle was an inspiration to us all and will be greatly missed.

John Geoffrey Sharps BTh, MA, MEd, MLitt, FRSA (died 6 January 2006)

John Geoffrey Sharps was a specialist in educational psychology, but will be most remembered for his work on Elizabeth Gaskell. This began at Oxford with his MLitt thesis, later published as Mrs Gaskell's Observation and Invention (1970). He followed the pioneering Gaskell scholar, A Stanton Whitfield, whose academic gown he had obtained and kept for special occasions. He also inherited Whitfield's standards of scholarship.

His timing was propitious, coinciding with a revival of interest in Gaskell's work, particularly her social conscience novels, Mary Barton and North and South. But Observation and Invention had a wider perspective, covering the full range of Gaskell's fiction. Geoffrey used to claim that his book was a work of reference rather than of original thought. But it was comprehensive, accurate and accessible, and established itself as a point of departure for all subsequent scholarship.

Born in Cheshire, he went to Sir John Dean's grammar school, Northwich. He was a graduate of Edinburgh University and held degrees from Queen's University Belfast, Oxford and Hull. He taught at the North Riding College of Education before taking early retirement in 1987.

Increasingly his efforts were channelled through the Elizabeth Gaskell Society, which he served as President (1993-99). He and his wife Heather, who he married in Belfast in 1966 and who shared his academic enthusiasms, were familiar figures at its functions. A 1999 BBC film about Gaskell featured his somewhat portly figure in a pair of vividly patterned shorts reading from the back of a trailer in Morecambe Bay.

Geoffrey was the kindest of men, always slightly surprised at the affection in which he was held. He is survived by Heather and by his children, Paul and Rosalind.

David I H Simspon, MD MB BCh BAO (4 September 2010)

Former Professor of Microbiology, Queens University, Belfast. Passed away peacefully, at Belfast City Hospital, after enduring Multiple Sclerosis for many years, cheerfully borne and without complaint, beloved husband of Cintra, father of Andrew, Alexandra, Gawain and Jonathan, father-in-law to Janet and Dani, grandpa to Alun and James.

Professor John Henderson Sinclair, Emeritus Professor, Stratchlyde University

(Obituary - Brian A Lockhart)

The sudden death of John Sinclair shocked and saddened all who knew him. John had a great capacity for friendship as the vast turnout at this funeral service in Crail Parish Church bore witness. It was a fitting tribute to a fine man.

His wife Sandra, to whom he was utterly devoted, said to me recently: “you probably knew him better than most – always late, always untidy, surrounded by papers and enormous fun. He really did find life a bit of a joke...his whole body would shake when something amused him.”

All who knew John have appreciated the joy he felt in being alive. The warmth of his personality infused every gathering.

He was educated at Craigholme School – it amused him greatly that he was one of the few boys to have attended this all-girls school, albeit in the nursery school – Glasgow Academy and Strathallan. He graduated BA Queen’s University Belfast and LLB at Glasgow University. He practised as a solicitor with Leslie Wolfson & Co and then on his own account. He was a clerk, treasurer and fiscal of the Royal Faculty of procurators in Glasgow for 1983 to 1993. He was made an honorary Member of the Faculty in 1997.

For more than 30 years he was editor of the Memorandum Book, known as ‘the Wee Red Book’, published by the Scottish Law Agents’ Society, which is regarded as essential reference material for all practicing solicitors. After retirement, he continued this much-appreciated task and was in the course of preparing the next edition at the time of his death.

However, John’s true metier was as a teacher of students. He was a lecturer in conveyancing at Strathcylde University from 1970, and, to popular acclaim, he was appointed the first Professor of Conveyancing at that university in 1992.

He was very interested in post-graduate legal education, feeling that there was a gap between university study and the practice of law. He became the first Director of the Diploma in Legal Practice at Strathclyde University in 1981 and, latterly, when post-graduate legal education in Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities combined, he was the first Director of the Glasgow Graduate School of Law.

He was the author of the Handbook of Conveyancing Practice in Scotland, now in its fifth edition. The last edition he edited jointly with his son, Euan. An extract from the preface speaks volumes of the man: “I have taught many students, more than I can easily remember. It gives me great pleasure to see so many of them achieving so much. Every year has been quite different from the one before but even in the worst times of student discontent I have found most students to be courteous, attentive, diligent, hard working and friendly; in short, totally different from the concept of the student beloved of modern mythology. I therefore wish to dedicate this book to my students, past, present, and – hopefully – future.”

His students, in turn, responded to his encouragement by positive attendance at lectures and tutorials conducted by him. He willingly spent a vast amount of his private time assisting students with their studies and ensuring that they were placed in traineeships after graduation. He cared. Many had particular cause to be grateful to him. The University of Strathclyde recognised his unique contribution to the university by appointing him Emeritus Professor in 2002.

He was a very clubable gentleman. He was past president of the Strathallan Club, the Glasgow Juridical Society, the Bridgeton Burns Club and Whitecraigs Rugby Club. He was a member of the Whitecraigs tennis Club, the Royal Automobile Club and then the Western Club in Glasgow, the New Golf Club of St Andrews, and Crail Golfing Society. The “Vicar” always had time for a word – and he always laughing and smiling.

He loved the ambience of sports clubs. His administrative talents were made full use of by Whitecraigs Rugby Club, where he was match secretary for over 25 years – organising three and sometimes four teams every Saturday was no mean feat.

While John would regard himself as an administrator and not a player, he found taking part in sport enormous fun. He participated with no little enthusiasm. A combination of different circumstances allowed me to play rugby, golf, tennis and squash with him. I am not certain he broke sweat on any of these occasions – but he was always in a position to give a full commentary on events as they unfolded.

He turned out in the No10 shirt for our office football team and was thereafter christened “Eusebio”. He satisfactorily masterminded, without leaving the centre circle, an unexpected victory against our old Glasgow rivals.

But for John, family came first. He was married to Sandra for 42 happy years. They lived in Whitecraigs until 2002 and thereafter in Crail. His children, Euan and Caroline, were a great source of pride to him, and he liked nothing better than to be in the company of his four grandchildren.

John suffered a stroke in February 2003. He fought this with great tenacity and courage, and made a wonderful recovery, although he did have some difficulty with his speech thereafter. However, with the assistance of Sandra and his constant smiling, he continued to be the life and soul of every social gathering. John, your many friends salute your memory. I was privileged to be one of them. We shall all miss you.

John Hartley Smith, MB BCh BAO 1949 (died 1 November 2006)

(Obituary and Appreciation by Brian Lowry)

John Smith died in Vancouver, BC after a short illness on November 1st, 2006.

He was born in Dungannon and attended Methodist College before going to Queen’s where he graduated in medicine in 1949. He embarked on a career in Public Health in the specialty of Occupational Health and obtained higher qualifications in that specialty in England (Diploma of Industrial Hygiene), Canada (Diploma of Public Health and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada) (FRCPC) and the United States of America from the Board of Preventive Medicine.

John had a distinguished career in the British Columbia Ministry of Health where he headed the Division of Occupational Health and subsequently rose to be the Assistant Deputy Minister. He was a member and often chair person of many Provincial and Federal Committees and Boards on Pollution, Environment, Hazardous Waste Management and involving many different industries including mining, milling, smelting, food processing and agriculture to name just a few.

John loved rugby and played for Queen’s, Collegians, Ulster and Ireland, (the latter over three seasons when he was capped 13 times) and the Barbarians Rugby XV. Indeed it was on a Queen’s rugby tour where he met his future wife, Sheila, on a train journey to Vancouver.

After emigration to Canada he continued to play rugby for many years even as a senior in Vancouver. He participated fully in community activities serving as president of the BC Rugby Union on two separate occasions as well as being a Director of the Canadian Rugby Union over many years. He served on the Board of his Church (St. Andrews Wesley) for many years and was Chairperson for two years.

John contributed to many organizations such as the Arthritis and Rheumatism Society, Canadian Red Cross, Vancouver Neurological Society and was advisor to Substance Abuse Organizations where he served as an international non alcoholic Trustee for Alcoholics Anonymous.

In all of his endeavours John enjoyed the love and support of his wife, Sheila, and together they raised three sons, one of whom is also a Queen’s medical graduate. He gave of himself and his time to many organizations and a helping hand to many people. He was universally liked, because he was a fair-minded man who provided a good dose of steady ‘Ulster commonsense’ and had a great sense of humour.

William Stout (born 22February 1907; died 18 March 2005)

The Irish Times

William (Bill) Stout, who has died, aged 98, had a distinguished career in the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) and was the first official in its history to rise through the ranks, from clerk, to become a permanent secretary, the most senior grade.

In his last term at Sullivan Upper School his headmaster had suggested to him that he should be a candidate at the first entrance exam for the new service, so that he could spend a year as a civil servant, to give himself time to decide what he really wanted to do. He entered the service in 1925 and evidently liked what he saw, as he stayed 47 years. While working in the civil service, he studied for an external degree in economics (BCom) at Queen’s University and for membership of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries.

A physically imposing, fit man, he played both rugby and cricket for Holywood and played golf at Holywood, Knock and Royal County Down Golf Clubs, at the height of his powers playing to a handicap of three.

He brought the same robust enthusiasm to his work where his keen intelligence and sound judgement marked him out early on as a high flyer. Although his workload was frequently enormous, he always gave the impression of being relaxed and reflective, and of having plenty of time to talk through problems with his staff.

He was excellent at delegation, setting out goals with clarity and precision; and when it came to reviewing progress, those working for him knew that he could unerringly come up with a key question no one else had thought of. At which point he would give a broad smile of satisfaction and say: ‘Let’s think about it further’.

He was appointed a principal in the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1943, assistant secretary in 1954, senior assistant secretary in 1959 and permanent secretary in 1961. In 1964 he moved to be permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health and Local Government and from 1965 to 1971 he held the same post in the Ministry of Development.

One of the most important aspects of his work at Home Affairs was the close co-operation he built up with the Home Office in London. He established close ties of friendship with the legendary Sir Charles Cunningham, permanent under secretary at the Home Office, which were to last until the latter’s death a few years ago. He also had a good relationship with his counterparts in Dublin.

When he was permanent secretary in the Ministry of Development he frequently travelled to Dublin to discuss cross-Border transport with the permanent secretary of the Department of Transport and Power, Thekla Beere. He was pleased that the press did not learn about these visits as he felt that they would be unable to resist the temptation of using the headline ‘Mr Stout meets Miss Beere’.

His arrival at the top of the Ministry of Home Affairs coincided with the IRA campaign of the late 1950s and early 60s, which meant that he worked closely with the minister, Brian Faulkner and later Bill Craig. He well understood the complexities of the interface between politics and administration and it is a mark of the respect in which he was held that both these very different politicians were subsequently to insist on his following them into other ministries.

Firstly, Craig took him to be the first permanent secretary of the newly established Ministry of Development, which was to carry forward an ambitious programme of infrastructural development aimed at enhancing Northern Ireland’s attractions as an industrial location. There was a large programme of work including modernising transport, roads, housing and local government and creating development commissions for Antrim, Craigavon and Derry.

It was a turbulent period, involving, amongst other things, long and difficult negotiations with landowners. After one such marathon session, a life-long teetotaller, he claimed to have created a world record for the number of orange juices consumed in one night.

In the hectic years of 1968-69, ministers of development came and went: Billy Fitzsimmons, William Long, Ivan Neil and Brian Faulkner. He was the constant in the situation. With his colleague, John Oliver, the second permanent secretary, Stout supported Faulkner in the mammoth task of the reshaping of local government and the setting up of the Housing Executive, both tasks being achieved in a little over a year.

When Faulkner became prime minister in 1971, he appointed Bill Stout head of the security unit within the Cabinet Office. His main task was co-ordinating the activities of the army and the RUC. As the army was controlled by London, this required considerable skill and diplomacy.

His retirement, on reaching the age of sixty-five, came at the same time as direct rule and many of his friends in the NICS believed at the time that his association with security had robbed him of the recognition he deserved. He himself never expressed the slightest disappointment. He had been awarded the CB in 1964.

In retirement he continued his interest in his family, travel and golf, which he continued to play until well into his 90s. After 65 years of marriage, his wife Muriel, died last year. He is survived by his son Robert, daughter Margaret, four grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Stephen David Stranock (1948 - 2007) BSc Hons (Zoology) 1971, PhD (Zoology) 1974

Dave Stranock was one of a group of Biology students at Queen’s back in the late 60’s. The following are two personal tributes for him from fellow graduates, but they reflect the thoughts and feelings of many who knew him from those days.

To generations of pupils at Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh, Dr Dave Stranock will have been a pillar of school life: professional, talented, inspirational, respected, admired. To us at Queen’s in Belfast in the late 60’s, he was a rowdy ruffian, just like the rest of us. A chance encounter on a train at Leeds station led Dave and me, embryonic zoologists both, to a seven year friendship which saw us metamorphose from spotty youths to “responsible” married men and eventually to the teaching profession. Dave made instant friendships because he had a genuine thirst for life in general and sport in particular. He had a charismatic personality, an irritating trait when girls were around!

Unsurprisingly, within weeks of arriving in Belfast, he was representing the University at basketball and rugby and spent his leisure time familiarising himself with a plethora of bars. We arrived in Belfast as “The Troubles” began, though rumours that we caused them are malicious. Few Englishmen ventured across the water in those days and perhaps this bonded us more closely, though we subsequently met plenty of deranged Irish folk! Dave’s charitable nature emerged quite early as we were persuaded to help raise money during the University Rag Week. Who knows just what the citizens of Belfast thought when a young man with a distinct Yorkshire accent dressed in drag tried to extract money from them? That week also saw our debut on the small screen as we managed to persuade an army of students to compete in a thirteen-legged race around the City Hall. The mathematics of cornering was interesting. Dave and I learnt to play squash together, eventually representing a local club. I rarely won! We shared numerous flats during which time I only remember one argument between us over who should wash the kitchen floor - I lost. Dave was that sort of guy.

Conscious of the purpose of University and the need to attend lectures, conflicts of interest were inevitable from time to time. One such occasion occurred in March 1970 when a particularly competitive Varsity match was due to be televised at 2 pm. Unfortunately our lecturers were unsympathetic to our dilemma and a cat dissection was scheduled to coincide with the kick off. We will never know whether the technicians omitted to remove the moggies from the deep freeze the previous night accidentally or by design but, whilst they were defrosting, we had just enough time to retire to the pub opposite to watch the match. No doubt someone will recall the result of the game, but neither Dave nor I could, and I fear that the kitties may have died in vain.

Never one to miss a party (and he was always the heart and soul of it) Dave would entertain us with his inexhaustible repertoire of irreverent rugby songs. No-one seemed to care that he was virtually tone deaf - I trust that he did not leave this knowledge as a legacy to his pupils.

The memories are endless. Sometimes in life you are lucky enough to share time with kindred spirits. I was fortunate, along with many others that our university days coincided with Dave’s. Merchiston was fortunate to have enjoyed his company for much longer. Deliciously imperfect, it was a privilege to have known him and a tragedy that he died so relatively young.

David James

I first met Dave Stranock in 1968 when I was a raw “Fresher” and he was already a hardened student with one year behind him. My experience of Yorkshiremen had been non-existent up to that point, a symptom of our parochial way of life here in Northern Ireland. I remember that for the first few weeks of term I had extreme difficulty in understanding him until my ear became attuned to his gruff accent. However, we were to become good friends over the next 6 years, first as undergraduates and then as postgraduates. He had a tremendous sense of humour and was always in the thick of any practical jokes that were to be played. In those halcyon days our cohort of Zoology and Botany students bonded together well, helped in no small measure by the compulsory field courses at Portaferry. In the evenings, after a hard day collecting specimens at unspeakably early low tides and then examining them in the laboratory, there were always darts competitions in the local hostelry, The Slip Inn. This was usually followed by a sing song, and Dave was always one of the more enthusiastic contributors to this event.

As a postgraduate Dave elected to study external parasites of fish and formed a close association with his supervisor Professor Halton. Dave was a hard worker and put in many long hours in the dark at the electron microscope. I suppose that is where we got to know each other particularly well as we had to compete for booking sessions on the microscope and the darkroom. This is possibly where Dave developed his eventual enthusiasm for photography.

In 1974 Dave graduated with his Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology and as happens so often our paths diverged. Dave went to a postdoctoral post at Moorefield Eye Hospital for a time before settling on a career in teaching and ending up at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh. However, it is a measure of the strength of the student bond when our class met up in Portaferry in 2005 for a reunion and discovered that we were able to strike up comfortable conversations within minutes as if the intervening 34 years had never happened. Dave was in his element at that reunion and, when we parted we resolved to repeat the event in five years’ time.

It came as a shock to all of us when we received the news in the autumn of 2006 to tell us that Dave was on a life support machine following a collapse when he returned from a school rugby trip to Brazil. Fortunately he rallied round, but it became painfully obvious that there was something seriously wrong. We met Dave one more time in April of this year. He came across to a house in Ballintoy with his wife Chris and daughter Victoria. Several of those who had been at the previous reunion were present and we had a lovely day together. Dave was genuinely pleased to see us all and it was very difficult to say goodbye at the end - Dave died peacefully on 7 July.

We shall all remember Dave with affection as a good-natured, fun-loving person who was always good company. The happy memories left to us from three decades ago and more recently are Dave’s legacy to us all.

Alan Bell

Margaret Brownlie Sutherland, PhD 1955 (died 29 March 2011)

(Obituary by Alison Shaw)

Margaret Sutherland was one of an indefatigable breed of post-war working women who blazed a trail through academia, preparing the way for generations to follow. Recognising that her appointment as a university professor gave her an opportunity to fly the flag for those in her wake, she chose to play a full part in the governance of her university, displaying her collegial spirit and flair for administration through contributions to the senate, extensive committee responsibilities and as chair of the education panel of the Board for Collegiate Academic Awards.

But such multi-tasking was nothing new to the indomitable Miss Sutherland who had already obtained a first in her M. Ed while teaching at various Glasgow secondary schools. The achievement followed her successes at Hutchesons' Girls' Grammar School, where she was Dux in 1938, and at Glasgow University where she graduated with first class honours four years later and received the Herkless prize for the most distinguished woman graduate in arts.

She also went on to become an author and Dean of Faculty as well as being recognised by the French government for her contribution to education with an appointment as Chevalier in the Order of the Palmes Academiques.

Born the eldest of three children, to Post Office supervisor George Sutherland and his wife Janet Robertson, she was a naturally studious youngster and consistently brilliant pupil. When she went to Glasgow University to study French and German she was disappointed to be unable to complete her year abroad when the Second World War intervened. Before leaving France, however, she had befriended a young French woman, who was later killed while working for the resistance. Following the war she kept in touch with her friend's sister, nurturing what proved to be a lifelong friendship.

After training as a teacher and gaining a First in Education and Psychology in 1945, she moved to Queen's University, Belfast as a lecturer in education where her academic development was rapid. This marked the start of an association with Northern Ireland that was to last for more than 25 years.

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Helen Taggart (nee Thompson) died 11 March 2006

(Obituary by Elizabeth Miller)

Helen was born on 2nd March 1913 and died on 11th.March 2006 at the age of 93 years. She had led a full life. She graduated with BA(Hons) in 1935 (Mathematics). She entered the teaching profession and taught at Down High School. She met and married Dr Ivor Given of the Royal Air Force in 1942. Sadly, she was widowed in 1943.

She decided to return to Queens to study medicine. There she met James Taggart, a medical graduate of Queens, (1939) and they married in 1948 going to England to work. They returned in 1953 and James became the Medical Officer of Health. They had four sons, Hugh, Alistair, John and Richard, two of whom also graduated in medicine and still work in the province.

Helen maintained her links with Queens and joined the QWGA, eventually serving as their President in 1970. She retained her interest in education serving as a Governor for Bloomfield Collegiate School and she attended Mrs. Devlin’s Wednesday English lecture for years! She made many firm friends and they all valued her highly. She was a much loved wife and mother and will be missed by all who knew her.

Alexander Walker (died July 2003)

(Obituaries for Alexander Walker appeared in several national and London evening newspapers, including The Guardian, for which a link appears below).

www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4713304-103684,00.html

Dr Frazier Walsh (died 6 March 2003)

Eulogy on Dr Frazier Walsh by Dr. Tom Cantwell

I experienced a great feeling of sadness on Friday morning when I received a phone call from Maeve Walsh saying that her dad had passed away the previous morning. I was extremely honoured to be asked by the family to present a eulogy for Dr. Walsh. Despite being ill myself, I was determined to fulfil the family's request. I realized that there were countless other people who could speak of Dr. Walsh far more eloquently than I could. However, as I thought about his life and my knowledge of him, and did some research of his accomplishments, I realized how much we actually had in common. I had arrived in Newfoundland with my family, including infant twins, in 1975 and followed in Dr. Walsh?s footsteps to become Clinical Director and Medical Director at the Waterford Hospital. I was humbled, however, when I looked at Dr. Walsh's many accomplishments.

Frazier, as he was best known, was born in Northern Ireland in 1920. He received his medical and psychiatric training at Queen's University, Belfast and at the Royal Victoria Hospital and qualified as a doctor in July 1945. He married his wife Kathleen, on July 18, 1946. Two years later they were the parents of twin girls, Maeve and Emir - Moya "the baby" was born in St. John's on July 21, 1958. He spent the greater part of time working in mental hospitals until brought to Newfoundland in January 1950.

The circumstances of Frazier's arrival in Newfoundland, I discovered, were very different from my own. His arrival here was not smooth sailing. He, Kathleen and the twins came to St. John's on the SS Nova Scotia. The crossing was very rough. The ship had to anchor twice in the Atlantic Ocean because of weather. It also had to anchor outside the narrows waiting to enter St. John's harbour, again because of the weather. Kathleen and the twins, then seventeen months old, suffered from seasickness and I am told that Frazier threw many dirty diapers overboard during the crossing.

When the ship finally docked at the Northeast side of the harbour Kathleen looked out the porthole at the snow and ice covered Southside hills and said she didn't care if it was a desolate looking rock, she was getting off that ship and never getting onboard another ship as long as she lived.

The family was met by Dr. Pottle and Dr. O'Brien, both psychiatrists at the Waterford Hospital, in fact the only psychiatrists at the Waterford Hospital at the time. They brought Frazier and his family to the Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases, now known as the Waterford Hospital. I remember quite well going to a meeting with Frazier several years ago. The date was January 13 and he remarked "I remember well forty six years ago today I walked up the steps of this hospital with a twin under each arm and it seems only like yesterday."

For the next two and a half years the family lived in an apartment on the second floor just over the front entrance of the Hospital. They then moved into a house on the grounds. I am told that Kathleen and the children got to know every nook and cranny of Bowring Park over the next several years.

Frazier was a man of many talents. These were not limited to his medical and psychiatric expertise. He was an avid fisherman, gardener, and had many and varied interests.

Most of us have had to do resumes and keep them updated on a regular basis for one reason or another. I have seen physicians' resumes more than twenty pages long detailing their various activities on committees, referring to their hobbies, their talents, their accomplishments, their publications, including a recent resume I received which stated "I hold a current British driver's license."

Frazier, being a simple man, had his resume on a single page. His resume gave simply his place and date of birth, his medical degrees, his list of experience from 1946 to 1994, memberships in a variety of administrative organizations, his position as Clinical Associate Professor at Memorial University and a list of awards.

The listing on his resume is typical of the man and the physician and one has to go behind the headings to uncover his real accomplishments.

A publication of Breakwater Books titled Out of Mind, Out of Sight a History of the Waterford Hospital, written by Patricia O'Brien, refers to many of these accomplishments. Frazier, in fact, was one of the sources utilized by Ms. O'Brien in her research for this book. The second part basically chronicles the lives of three great men: Doctors O'Brien, Pottle and Frazier Walsh.

When he began at the Waterford Hospital in 1950, he was the third psychiatrist on staff. The hospital was much bigger at that time and the first of the effective medications had not yet been discovered. He was instrumental in bringing not only the Waterford Hospital into a new era but also psychiatry in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. He was deeply involved in the development of the residency-training program at Memorial University. By the late 1950's, to quote from Out of Mind, Out of Sight, "the residency training program was regarded as one of the best in existence in Canada."

Doctor Walsh was always been interested in St. John Ambulance and over the years had responsibilities for training and examining candidates, both with the civilian population and in the militia. He was instrumental in setting up the Nursing Division and Ambulance Brigade in the Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases. In 1962, he was received as a serving brother into the Order of St. John of Jerusalem and in November 1962 was appointed deputy provincial commissioner of the Newfoundland St. John Ambulance Brigade.

I have here an old undated cutting from a newspaper showing a photograph of Frazier in uniform and an article announcing his appointment as provincial commissioner. The article reads:

The St. John Ambulance Brigade has announced the appointment of Lt. Col. J.F. Walsh, C.D., MB as provincial commissioner of the St. John Ambulance Brigade in Newfoundland. He succeeds Col. A.S. Lewis, C.D., MD who held the appointment for 14 years.

Since coming to Newfoundland, Doctor Walsh has been keenly interested in the Canadian Militia.

He is an ex-commanding officer of No.1 Medical Company, R. C.A. M. C. (Militia) and held the post of D.A.D.M.S. for the Newfoundland area when he retired in 1964 with rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Prior to retirement to the reserve list Doctor Walsh was awarded the Canadian Decoration.

I also have a copy of another letter written by John J. O'Brien, C.A.E., M.B.A., Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of St. John Ambulance, Newfoundland Council. In this letter Dr. Walsh is described as having "served an exemplary medical career in Canada. In addition to his distinguished psychiatric career, he has been an innovator in the field of first level, self-help care through this organization. He has worked with international resources to deliver such self-help programs to the remote areas of Labrador in Canada, where there existed no resident health care professionals. This model has been used in numerous countries around the world. Because of this endeavour, as well as his long time command of the St. Johns Ambulance Brigade in this province, Her Majesty saw fit to honour his service by conferring a Knighthood of the Order of St. John on him in 1975. "

If I were to outline all of Frazier's accomplishments, or even a few, this eulogy would be far too long and my greatest challenge was to decide what not to include. I know he would want this kept simple. I could elaborate on other awards he received including his Knighthood in the order of St. John, a medal for European Defence, a centennial medal, the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal, and a Canadian Decoration.

Frazier often chatted with me about the changes he had seen during his career in Newfoundland and it is humbling to realize that many of the things we now take for granted are possible only because of the dedication, perseverance and unwillingness to quit or accept defeat of this great man.

To conclude, despite all his achievements, the people he held nearest and dearest to him were his wife, his children and his grandchildren. I will close with a short verse, which I recall from my own two-room National School in Ireland.

"To each is given a book of rules, a shapeless mass and a box of tools and each must fashion err life as flown, a stumbling block or a stepping stone."

On behalf of colleagues, co-workers and consumers, I thank you Dr. Frazier Walsh for all of the stepping stones you have fashioned and left for us to follow. It has been an honour to know you and work with you.

Richard Burkewood Welbourn, MA, MD, FRCS

Dick Welbourn was a leader in the field of surgical endocrinology and an internationally recognised teacher, lecturer and author. As Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery, Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, he was at the forefront of the developing specialty of surgical endocrinology.

His interest in endocrinology was stimulated by a year in 1951 as a Fulbright Scholar in the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, where the new drug cortisone was being used by the Nobel prize-winners Kendall and Hench. Dr Welbourn who joined the staff of Queen's in 1952 started performing adrenalectomy for Cushing's disease and was appointed Professor of Surgical Science at Queen's in 1958.

In 1962 he was invited to the Hammersmith and became known for his work on the ectopic ACTH syndrome, phaeochromocytoma and for his contributions to the science and surgery of the adrenals, hormone-dependent cancer, gut and stomach.

Dick travelled widely, lecturing in 5 continents. He was a President of the Surgical Research Society, the British Association of Endocrine Surgeons and of the International Surgical Group. He was Vice-President of The Institute of Medical Ethics and the Section of Surgery, RSM.

Dick was educated at Rugby School, Emmanuel College Cambridge and Liverpool University. Graduating in 1942, he worked as Casualty Officer at the Royal Southern Hospital. Called up in January 1943, his RAMC Field Dressing Station followed the D-day landings into France and the Low Countries. He married Rachel Haighton BDS in 1944 (5 children). Demobbed in 1947, he returned to surgery in Liverpool.

He wrote 'Clinical Endocrinology for Surgeons' (1963) and 'Medical and Surgical Endocrinology' (1975) with Professor D Montgomery. With Professors A Duncan and G Dunstan, he edited 'The Dictionary of Medical Ethics' (1977). He became Professor of Surgical Endocrinology (1979) and Professor Emeritus, London University (1983). As Visiting Research Fellow at UCLA, he wrote 'The History of Endocrine Surgery' (1990).

He was given the Distinguished Service Award of the International Association of Endocrine Surgeons (Stockholm 1991) 'in recognition of his many pioneering efforts in the field of Endocrine Surgeons, ... his early recognition of the importance of international postgraduate training and the initiation of the first international course in Endocrine Surgery'. His many other honorary awards included a DSc from Queen's in 1985.

Philip Morgan Whiteman, MA Library & Information Studies (died 2 November 2007)

Philip Whiteman, born 19 June 1926, died in hospital in early November after major surgery. He was a major influence on the education of librarians and on the work of their professional body, the Library Association. In 1964, he joined the School of Library and Information studies at Queen's, where he gained his Masters Degree before becoming director.

For a fuller obituary please visit The Guardian.

Dorothy Wilson (died January 2005)

(Obituary and appreciation by John M Gorman)

Dr Dorothy Wilson, MB 1946, died in January 2005, aged 83 years. After qualification she worked in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast before going to England to work in hospital and general practice. She then took an opportunity to go to the University Hospital in Jamaica which was an interesting experience.

Dorothy returned to Queen’s to study for a DPH. Then, as a doctor in the Colonial Medical Service, she went back to Jamaica to look after public health in Montego Bay. There were also other posts in the West Indies and Hong Kong. This mix of medicine, travel (such as climbing to see Machu Picchu) plus meeting a wide range of people, gave her great pleasure.

Because of her mother’s health, Dorothy came home and became a key member of the family and a loving and practical aunt and great-aunt. She was also at the centre of a wide circle of good friends. Dorothy continued to practice medicine until her retirement.

George Sidney Lowen Wilson, MB, BCh, BAO, MRCS, LRCP (August 29, 1931 – February 21, 2010)

(Obituary by R. Brian Lowry)

Lowen was born in Portadown and attended Coleraine Academical Institute prior to university.

He graduated from Queen’s in 1959 subsequently being a House Officer at Ards Hospital, Newtownards as well as further time at the Quoyle Hospital in Downpatrick. He entered family practice in Lisburn and later moved to Belfast but emigrated to Canada in 1966. He worked in rural Alberta in a small town called Drumheller for 24 years and subsequently opened his own practice in Calgary in 1990. He was extremely well liked by his patients and his colleagues. He enjoyed medical practice and his involvement with patients continued up to a few months before his death of prostate cancer. He had survived other separate cancers including a removal of one kidney as well as a unilateral accoustic neuroma. The latter left him with deafness and partial facial paralysis on one side but it did not slow him up in any way.

As well as his medical practice he was extremely active in the Drumheller community and indeed in Alberta. He was a school trustee in Drumheller and later a member of the Senate of the University of Calgary as well as being a trustee of Knox United Church in Drumheller and later in Red Deer Lake United Church. He was deeply involved in the Banff Men’s Conference of the United Church and was a lifelong member of the Masonic Lodge in Drumheller.

Lowen treasured his loving relationship with his wife, Bertha, whom he married in 1960 as well as the pride and accomplishments of his son and daughter and his grandchildren. He took great pride in his Ulster roots and especially his years at Queen’s and his early upbringing was exemplified by his integrity, dedication to his patients and a good dose of Ulster common sense and wit.

Lucy Margaret Wilkin (nee Hunter), MB BCh BAO, died 21 April 2005

Lucy worked as a Clinical Medical Officer for Staffordshire County Council. She was Captain of the Queen's Ladies Hockey Team which won The Chilean Cup in 1943.

Lucy is survived by her husband, Dr Mitchel Wilkin, 3 children and 5 grand-children.

Chin Fah Yap MB BCh BAO, 1977 (died 26 February 11)

(obituary by Che Cheung, Melanie Yap)

Born in Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia on 16th March, 1951 Dr. Yap passed away peacefully after a courageous battle with cancer in Canton, China, on Saturday 26th February 2011.
Dr. Yap touched many lives with his kindness, generosity of spirit and all-round decency. He was the consummate gentlemen – tolerant, commanding but without conceit. The youngest son of a family of thirteen, Chin Fah Yap attended St. Michael’s Institution in Ipoh, a La Sallian Community school. From 1968 – 1971 he completed his GCE Ordinary and Advanced Levels in the Coleraine Academical Institution. In 1971 he was admitted into Queens University Belfast medical school, graduating in the summer of 1977.
After his houseman’s year in Manchester, England, he returned to serve in the Malaysian Army as a medical officer. On leaving the Army he entered private practice in Ipoh, where he worked for several years before eventually settling in Perth, Australia in 1989 as a general practitioner. Sadly, Dr. Yap lost his dear wife, Fee Sim Leong to cancer in 2002. Fee Sim was also a Queens University Belfast graduate.
Dr. Yap is survived by his son Ben (31) and daughter Melanie (29), his elderly mother (89) and ten siblings.
“Sovereign Ruler of the skies,
Ever gracious, ever wise,
All my times are in Your hand,
All events at Your command,
And all our souls in Your keeping.” David H. Roper.
There never was a finer man; there is a new star in the firmament.

Peter John Gormley

Former consultant ophthalmologist and otolaryngologist, Mater Hospital Belfast

My father has died aged 90 following a fall at his home on 8th June 2011.
Born in Ballygawley, Co Tyrone in 1920, Peter was the second of six children to James and Hannah Gormley. Thanks to his sharp brain and a wonderful teacher whom he held always in high esteem, he won a scholarship to study at St Patrick’s College, Armagh. Accepted aged 16 in 1936 to Queen’s University Belfast medical school, he attended lectures for ten days before being told he wastoo young to have been enrolled and was advised to return in a year.

He graduated from Queen’s in July 1944 whereupon he spent the obligatory six months as an intern in the Mater Hospital Belfast as well as working as a GP locum in the environs of the hospital, doing house calls on a bicycle. Having initially intended to become a general practitioner, he was deflected in this aim by his inspirational consultant in ENT and Ophthalmology, (acommon speciality at that time) who had an immeasurable impact on his life and was offered the post of honorary clinical assistant in 1945.

Following a year of work and study in Moorfields Eye Hospital and the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital, London, he returned to the Mater where he was appointed consultant in ENT and Opthalmology in 1948, aged 28 years. After completing his general ophthalmic surgical training he worked in the Mater whilst simultaneously running a NHS and private practice from his home which he shared with his devoted wife Doreen and their ten children. A founder member of the Campaign for Social Justice, forerunner of the Civil Rights Association, Peter’s only regret in life was the sectarian murder of his 14 year old son, Rory in 1972.

Revered deservedly for his exceptional bedside manner, he provided Queen’s medical students with many years of clinical training and charmed everyone he met with his humility, honesty and cordiality. His dedication as a surgeon led him to pioneer day case cataract surgery in Northern Ireland in 1964 and his commitment to the Mater Hospital was lifelong. Retired from the NHS in 1987, he continued to see patients at his home until aged 83. As a prolific family photographer all his holidays were spent in his beloved, Bunbeag, Co Donegal.

A meticulous raconteur aided by impeccable powers of recall, he showed commendable courage throughout his final years in the face of progressive ill health. Predeceased by his son and wife, he leaves nine children and seventeen grandchildren.

James Gormley