Obituaries
installed and maintained Monotype’s typesetting machines throughout the African continent. Baba Mark, as he was known, travelled and worked all over West Africa, making friends everywhere he went, by making people laugh and showing generosity. People liked him and in return he loved Africa. He had a gift for languages and could converse in the main languages of Nigeria, Yoruba and Esan, as well as his fluency in the European languages he had studied earlier. He returned to the UK in 1971, soon after Nigeria’s independence, and remained with Monotype until the late 1970s. Then, he set up his own business, John Wall Business Services (JWBS), trading as an export agent, serving the print industry and then diversifying to supply a variety of products to customers around the globe until retirement. While in Nigeria, John met and married Oduaki (Margie) Aboira and they were soon the parents of three children, Mark, Sarah and Jane. After returning to the UK with three young children, they initially settled in Cambridge for one year, but then moved to Croydon. John and Margie separated in the early 1980s, and he shared the next 30 years of his life with a university sweetheart, Inge Ruhfus, at his own pace. They travelled together to all corners of the British Isles and internationally, lived happily near Alicante, Spain, but returned regularly to their Croydon home, and their fruit and vegetable allotment. They pursued their joint passions for travel, good food, wine and wild mushrooms. He suffered from prostate cancer which caused complications with his kidneys. The cancer was initially responding well to treatment until December 2013 but then over a period of three months it became unstoppable and he passed away peacefully at home with his dearest Inge at his side. He is survived by Inge, all three children and by 6 grandchildren. His son, Mark Wall, contributed significantly to this obituary.
and son-in-law and enjoyed life surrounded by their increasing family, including two grandchildren and finally a first great grandchild. He lived in his own home until a month before his death at the age of 94. This obituary was contributed by Cyril’s family in Australia.
Dr Michael Pelling White (1951-58) 20.10.1939 – 30.03.2014
Michael White came to the College from nearby Rosendale Road School with an LCC scholarship as part of the Gilkes Experiment. He was in Spenser, sang in The Messiah as a treble in the School Choir at the Royal Festival Hall in 1952, and is
remembered for his boxing for the school, particularly in The Quad, an annual boxing and fencing tournament between four schools, Dulwich, Eton, Bedford and Haileybury. In his later years at the College, he concentrated his studies on sciences. After Dulwich, he went to St. Thomas’s Hospital in London to study Medicine, graduating as MRCS and LRCP in 1964. He worked as a doctor for many years over five continents, starting in Zambia in its independence year, 1964, when he was invited by old friend Stuart Hulse (50-57) to Lusaka Airport to see the new VC10 jet airliner being demonstrated throughout Africa at the time by British United Airways, then under the leadership of Freddie Laker. He soon moved from Zambia to become a Divisional Medical Officer in Sarawak, before returning to Africa as Medical Officer on the Mitchell Cotts Cotton Plantation in the Tendaho Desert in Ethiopia. He also worked in several other countries in Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Far East before moving to America in 1976 to take up a post in New Hampshire. After a punishing first winter of extreme cold and snow, he and his family moved to the kinder climate in Arizona where he began work at the US military hospital at Fort Huachuca, becoming Chief Of Medicine in 1985 and remaining there until his retirement in 2006. In 1969 Michael married Philomena Power, a nurse he had worked with in Zambia. They had two children, a son in 1974 and a daughter in 1976 but, sadly, Philomena died in 2001. In 2007, he married Jane Chambers, a life-long family friend. After official retirement, he continued with a regular schedule of volunteering, working with soldiers returning from conflict zones in the Middle East. He also trained and served as an arbitrator for the County Alternative Dispute Resolution Programme, until he became ill in November 2013. Another, non-medical achievement of which he was quietly very proud was the publication on both sides of the Atlantic of his one and only novel, titled ‘Mr Blo Ko Lee’, which he wrote using the pseudonym John Tyne. The book drew on his experiences in Sarawak and was favourably reviewed by
Cyril Arthur Ernest White (1930-32) 09.04.1919 – 24.06.2013
Cyril White came to Dulwich from Bec School in Tooting Bec and was in Spenser for his brief stay at the College. He became a Chartered Engineer, and served as a Staff Sergeant in the Royal Engineers in India and later in Europe during WW2. He moved
to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in 1952 to help design and build their electricity power grid, spending most of his leisure time at the Dar es Salaam Yacht Club. He moved to South Africa in 1967 to join ESCOM, the South African National Electricity Board, remaining with them until he retired in 1983. He married Joan Hoffman in 1942, and they had one daughter. On his retirement from work, Cyril and Joan both moved to Australia in 1983 to join their daughter
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