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www dinner and lunch, and was made a Lifetime Vice-President in 2017.
“In 2013 he was awarded the Order of the League of Mercy for his charity work.”
1939
Roger Sharratt (Sn)
died 19th May 2018.
His son, Peter Sharratt (Sn 69), writes: “Roger was a founder pupil of Sanderson House, having been transferred from Grafton when it was built. In 1940 he started a shortened Engineering degree at Clare College, Cambridge, and two years later was called up and commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME).
“His heavy wrecking crew rescued and repaired vehicles in the wake of the Allied armies moving across France, Holland and Germany in1944, with Roger first landing in Normandy 10 days after the initial D-Day onslaught.
“Later he was posted to Kenya, where he met my mother, Gael, a nurse trained at Manchester Royal Infirmary. After demob they married in 1947. My brother, Tim Sharratt (Sn 67), and I were born in 1949 and 1952, and our family settled in Knutsford, Cheshire.
“Although he survived the war relatively unscathed, Roger very nearly came to grief in the summer of 1966, when our family went on a gliding holiday to Ashford in Kent. He was flying solo when he misjudged a landing and crashed his glider at the end of the runway. He broke his back, taking many months to recover. He let others fly him after that.
“Although he was a director of the building company which his grandfather had founded, the daily challenges of managing staff were not really his thing. He was made redundant in his 50s, so went back to university (UMIST) to do a degree in Ophthalmic Optics and became an optician, which suited him better. He ran an optician’s shop in Knutsford and then my parents made the decision to move down to Seaton in Devon, where Roger was an optician in nearby Axminster.
“Roger outlived three wives and with all of them enjoyed exchange visits around the world, including America and Japan, as part of Friendship Force. Five
years ago, he moved up to be near me, living at Sunrise home in Mobberley, but for the last few years of his life he suffered from dementia.
“Roger gained a reputation for wearing garish, Hawaiian-style shirts and bow ties, so we made that the dress code for his funeral service on 31st May 2018.
“He loved doggerel and nonsense poetry, and would happily quote large chunks from memory. With that in mind, as part of our final farewell we adapted this poem from Roald Dahl for his colourful service:
“As I was going to St Ives
I met a man with several wives
Said he: ‘I think it’s much more fun Than getting stuck with only one.”
1940
G.P. Glynn (N)
died 15th August 2017.
L.A. Retallack (C)
died 22nd February 2018.
N.M. Viney (Sc)
died 9th January 2018.
D Watson (N)
died 5th March 2018.
1941
J.A.H. Norman (Sc) died 20th January 2018.
1942
Kurt Berger (St A) died 3rd July 2018.
His son, David, writes: “Kurt was born in a part of what is now the Czech Republic, but in 1923 was a German- speaking area called Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia. His parents were
Jewish. He had a (non-identical) twin brother, Dick, who died in 1998. When Hitler came to power, his father realised that, as Jews, they were at risk and so the family moved to England.
“Though they settled in London, the boys went to prep school in Sussex and Kurt later went to Oundle, where he had a rounded education, learning Classics, French, English Literature, Poetry and Carpentry, along with the Sciences. Kurt went to Cambridge to read Natural Sciences. On leaving in 1944, he went to work at J. Lyons, in the laboratory in Hammersmith, where research was carried out to test different ingredients. Kurt specialised in edible oils and fats for use in baking and ice cream.
“He worked there until retiring early aged 55. By then he had been promoted to be head of the laboratory and had been to a number of international conferences. Through these, he obtained consultancy work with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. As a result, he received an invitation to set up a research institute in Malaysia into palm oil, by then a major agricultural product. Starting with a handful of people in a shop building in Kuala Lumpur, it became an employer of hundreds of staff in a purpose-built establishment outside the capital by the time Kurt retired in 1986.
“One of Kurt’s hobbies was gardening, especially roses and vegetable growing – and he was very active in the Chiswick Horticultural Society, winning many prizes at every show.
“He loved classical music, singing madrigals for some years, and regularly attending concerts, the opera and the Proms until his stroke in 2015. Another passion was photography.
“In Malaysia, Kurt and his wife, Margaret, were enthusiasts for nature conservation, going on many trips into the rainforest and snorkelling on the coral reefs on the east coast of Malaysia.
“His first sailing experiences were on the Norfolk Broads as an undergraduate and later the whole family enjoyed Broads holidays.
“Kurt was passionate about education and when the move to comprehensive education was proposed in the 1960s, Kurt became very active in a campaign for improved state education. Always an enthusiast for whatever he took on, he had such a wide range of interests and
OBITUARIES
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THE OLD OUNDELIAN 2017 –2018