On 7 December 2023, Colin Robert Poole, aged 79 years, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Mr Poole registered with the Society in 1967.
Tribute
After early experience in community pharmacy in his hometown of Cirencester, Gloucestershire, Colin was appointed by the UK Overseas Development Administration to work as a pharmacist and hospital secretary in Zambia, and was posted to Kasama General Hospital, where I joined him as a colleague in February 1972. He and his wife, Liz, were very kind to us, putting us up in their home until we were allocated our own accommodation.
Colin was meticulous in his work, both as a pharmacist and in his management role in the hospital, and I learned a lot from him as, together with the matron and the medical superintendent, we ran a 300-bed hospital and a dozen health centres scattered over a radius of 60 miles around the town.
He was also a talented musician, and was organist and treasurer of Kasama Community Church.
Colin’s professional skills were recognised by the Ministry of Health, and he was soon transferred to the much bigger Ndola Central Hospital, again as pharmacist and hospital secretary.
Our paths crossed again in 1975, when we both returned to the UK, and were appointed as peripatetic staff pharmacists in the Oxford Hospitals, where we again worked happily together.
Colin subsequently worked in hospital pharmacy in Saudi Arabia, before becoming proprietor of The Town Pharmacy in Cheltenham, which he ran for many years.
His funeral in Cheltenham on 9 January was an opportunity to recognise his many attributes, and to sympathise with his former wife, Liz, and their children, Becky, Jonathan and Christopher.
Ian G Simpson