Page 137 - OO_2018

F.J.F. Spragg (Lx) died 26th June 2018.
D.F. Talbot (Sc) died in 2017.
R.E. Tatham (C) has died.
1956
P.J. Bradley (S) died in 2018.
Gary Flather (D)
died 9th October 2017.
The following obituary appeared in The Times:
Gary Denis Flather was born into one of Sheffield’s leading steel families to Joan and Denis, who was a Master Cutler, effectively an ambassador for the industry. Gary went to Oundle School, then read Law at Pembroke College, Oxford, having battled with his strong- willed father, who wanted him to join the family steel business. He did his National Service with the infantry in Aden, then served in the Territorial Army for three years.
He did have a short stint in the family business, but was called to the Bar in 1962, taking silk in 1984. He made many lifelong friends along the way, such as Michael Howard (later Lord Howard), Donald Anderson (later an MP and then a peer) and a future Lord Justice of Appeal, Robin Auld, with whom he shared rooms for 18 years. He also had many pupils of great distinction, including Andrew Collins, who became a High Court judge.
Flather loved to travel and on a visit to Delhi as part of a world tour he met Shreela Rai. They married in 1966 and had two sons: Paul, a fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford, and the first Head of the Central European University; and
Marcus, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at East Anglia University. Flather continued an active law
practice, even though his disability barred him from the most senior appointments, serving as a deputy High Court judge for a decade. He also took on a dizzying array of tribunals, dictating his judgments using voice-recognition software. These included the Mental Health Review Tribunal, of which he was President for 23 years; the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, for whom he standardised procedures; police disciplinary appeals; an insider-dealing bank inspection for the Department of Trade and Industry; and the Inner London Education Authority’s teachers disciplinary tribunal — including the controversial inquiry into William Tyndale Junior School in the mid-1970s, after radically progressive methods had been introduced at the North London primary, and which led to increased government control over education.
He carried on working, dictating a complicated judgment the week he died. He also continued to indulge his zest for travel, enjoying often challenging cruises, the easiest mode of travel for him, including trips to the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the fjords, and in 2017 to the Pacific, where he contracted pneumonia. He had a recurrence of it, but had appeared to be on the mend just before he died.
D.J.T. Rymer (G)
died 10th August 2017.
1957
J.F. Willetts (Sn) died 17th July 2018.
1958
P.J. Davey (Sn)
died 4th March 2018.
I. Palmer-Lewis (C) died in 2017.
1960
P.H.A. Austin (G)
died 7th December 2017.
B. Hinton (C)
died 28th January 2018.
George Petch (Ldr) died 15th January 2017.
Tony Sleight (Ldr 59) writes: “George won a scholarship to Oundle from the Grimsby Borough of Education.
“His passions were motorcycles, cars, trains and travel. His interest in trains started from a platform on Grimsby Town station at the beginning of each new term and a smoke-filled journey to Peterborough and then on to Oundle aboard another steam train. However, his passion for motorcycles was his No.1 dream. He had developed a taste for all things mechanical at Oundle when he was allowed to work on a 1908 Rolls Royce.
“In 1974 he met up with Freddie Frith, who had won the Isle of Man TT races five times and become the 350cc European and world champion. He owned a motorbike shop in Grimsby and was nearing retirement, and George became General Manager in his shop for eight years, which set him on the road to owning his own business. After a bad motorcycle crash he decided to set up his own business, calling it Wheels, and it became known for its excellence in selling and repairing motorcycles far and wide.
“George travelled the world, going to Honda factories in Japan and Brazil, and to the factories of BMW and Suzuki. The business continued to prosper with the help of his wife, Anne, whom he had met at an accountancy firm, where they both worked when he first left Oundle. They shared their love of motorbikes, often riding together in their travels around the world and to his favourite destination, New Zealand.
“Wheels was voted the third best motorcycle business in the UK by a
national motorbike magazine a few years
ago and George became renowned as
one of the most experienced authorities www
OBITUARIES
THE OLD OUNDELIAN 2017 –2018
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