My father, Ian Waterproof coat, who has died aged 97, loved a distinguished profession as a civil engineer for greater than three many years earlier than reinventing himself as a secondary college maths trainer in later life.
As a civil engineer, Ian labored for Halcrow, Taylor Woodrow and Balfour Beatty on initiatives as diverse as Dungeness A nuclear energy station, the Mangla dam in Pakistan, Kainji dam, Nigeria, and deep station excavation and tunnelling for the London Underground Jubilee line at Bond Avenue. Along with quite a few articles in skilled journals Ian, who had an experience in dams, was invited to talk on the 1964 Worldwide Congress on Giant Dams in Edinburgh.
Born in Anstruther, Fife, Ian was the son of James, a GP, and Emma (nee Ellis), a Salvation Military officer. James was killed in a biking accident when Ian was three months previous, and Emma moved to Bathtub with Ian and his elder brother, Jim, to take up a submit as warden of a Salvation Military retirement house.
Ian received a scholarship to Epsom Faculty in Surrey (1938-44), the place he skilled German V1 and V2 rockets flying within the neighborhood of the college. He then studied mechanical sciences at St John’s Faculty, Cambridge, quickly gaining prominence as a rugby referee because of the absence at struggle of the lecturers who often took this position. In 1946 Ian refereed the second XV varsity match (Cambridge LX Membership v Oxford Greyhounds) whereas nonetheless an undergraduate. He was additionally co-founder of the Cambridge College and District Referees Society, which nonetheless administers the refereeing of faculty, college and membership rugby in Cambridgeshire.
After nationwide service at Sandhurst, the place he was known as upon to be a maths teacher for officer cadets, Ian joined Halcrow as a civil engineer in 1950. His final position in that sector was as an financial evaluation marketing consultant at Balfour Beatty, from which he took early retirement in 1981, after which reinvented himself as a maths trainer. Given the contemporaneous scarcity of lecturers of that topic, mixed together with his earlier expertise at Sandhurst, Ian was not required to do additional coaching. He taught at Cardinal Newman college in Acton (1981-84) adopted by Sacred Coronary heart college in Hammersmith, the place he was on workers till his official retirement in 1991, then continued to behave as a provide trainer till he turned 70 in 1996.
Exterior work Ian was a choral singer for greater than 70 years, together with a stint within the Bach choir. He was a stalwart member of the London Society of Rugby Referees, the place a fellow member of his “Golden Oldies” group was Denis Thatcher. In retirement he self-published 5 books that includes his abridgements of journey and theological writings.
In 1962 Ian met Hilary Hunt, a main college trainer, by way of the English Talking Union membership in London, they usually married later that yr. After two years primarily based on the Kainji dam, central Nigeria, the place I used to be born, the household settled in Hammersmith, west London.
Hilary died in 2022. Ian is survived by his kids, Catherine and me, 5 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren.
