Page 2 - John Walsh 1935-2020: A Service of Thanksgiving

John Hugh Walsh
was born in Spalding, Lincolnshire, on 12 January 1935.
As a boy, he experienced war rationing but would wax lyrical about
'proper' red Leicester cheese.
He attended Wyggeston Grammar School but left a year early after winning a scholarship in 1952 to study botany at Wadham College, Oxford. He went on to earn a first class degree and then a PhD.
A keen cyclist, he completed many long rides before and after suffering a broken pelvis in an accident with a dustbin lorry which put him in hospital for two months. In the summer of 1956 he completed an epic nine-week cycling Grand Tour of Europe which took in Venice, Florence and Rome.
He started his first job as an assistant lecturer at Edinburgh University in 1958 and the following year met Brenda Booth. Together, and with pal Peter Brooks, they developed a mutual love of the Highlands.
They married in Edinburgh on 29 June 1962 and honeymooned as wardens of Kishorn Youth Hostel in the North West Highlands for four weeks that summer.
Later that year John took a job lecturing in microbiology at Liverpool University. The newlyweds stayed in a flat in West Kirby before buying their first house in Wallasey on the Wirral, where they endured the harsh winter of 1962/3 which froze all the water in the house.
Helen was born in June 1964 and Hugh was born in November 1966. The family moved to Lawrence Road, Hazel Grove, in 1968 when John started at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). By now he was teaching genetics.
Hugh died of leukaemia in February 1969, aged two and three months.
Many years later John was to say: 'He was his own wonderful character and we feel he would have surprised us with his own achievements...Brenda and I learnt how to cope with this together. But we nevertheless still regret that years later, as we see the rates for leukaemia survival increase, we can't help saying 'if only'/