We first met David almost 60 years ago and still remember him with affection, despite meeting only occasionally since. As fellow students enrolling on the University of Nottingham’s BPharm degree course in 1963, we have been reflecting on the value of friendships made during these important formative years.
Some of us needed more forming than others, but David already seemed to be the finished article with an easy-going, amusing and charming manner that stayed with him throughout his life. He brightened up many a dreary chemistry practical; having sailed through his own experiments, he would saunter through the lab for a consoling chat with those who were still struggling or who had thrown the wrong solution down the sink.
David was moved from Kent to Higher Bebington in the Wirral, where he was educated at Birkenhead School, which probably set him on the road to being “the smoothest guy in the class”.
On graduation, he worked in London for Beecham and then Hoffmann La Roche, joining the Pharmaceutical Society’s register in October 1967. But it wasn’t until he moved to Germany to work in data processing for Lufthansa that he realised his true niche lay in this newly developing industry. Returning to the UK, he joined Commercial Union in Caterham, Surrey, then Zurich Assurance in Portsmouth, before finally becoming data processing software manager at the latter’s head office in Zurich. Fluent in German and French, he travelled extensively throughout Europe and the US.
Although David did not practise pharmacy for long, he maintained his Royal Pharmaceutical Society membership throughout most of his working life. Pharmacy’s loss is now a sad loss to us, his friends.
Our sympathies are with his wife, Daphne, and family.
Sue Allen, Adrienne de Mont, Pam Epps, Russell Greene, Pam Newton, Geoffrey Shand, Michael Stern and Celia Timson