Page, Roger

OT 123 - North

Date of Death: 05/11/2015

Taken from The Gazette 60.

Roger was born in Bournemouth and spent the war growing up in Devon. After the war his parents moved to the Napa Valley in California, where his uncle had a vineyard. Schooling in the Napa Valley, which involved a walk of several miles, seems to have consisted in large part of country dancing and shooting. Indeed, when asked if he had a gun and giving the answer “No”, Roger, aged 8, was promptly equipped with the necessary armament, taken outside and taught to shoot rabbits. After two years Roger’s parents returned to the UK, and in 1949 he was accepted for Ottershaw – where we knew him as Percy. The schooling in California was behind that in England and meant that he had a lot of catching up to do, and indeed he did this while at Ottershaw and later on, too. Like all of us, he participated in the physical as well as the intellectual pursuits, in particular rugby and cross-country running, and in the holidays sailing on the River Hamble.

Percy’s National Service was in the Signals Corps based in Germany, and this was prescient or fortunate as communications were to play a major part in his future life. After National Service he became a radio officer in the Merchant Navy, mainly with Union Castle on the East Africa route, but after a few years he decided to enhance his education and career prospects. On leaving the sea he first took A levels and then, as a mature student, a four-year sandwich in Physics at the then-Portsmouth Poly followed by an M.Sc. in Electronics from Southampton University. These qualifications gave him the foundation for his subsequent career. First he lectured at Bristol Nautical College, teaching Electronics for two years. Then he got a job in research and development at Plessey in Poole, working on automatic telephone exchanges. Finally, he went back to Portsmouth Poly lecturing in Computer Science. He specialised in computer architecture and hardware, including highly parallel computers, and published several papers. But after the polytechnic became a university the classes became bigger and the working life more hectic, so almost to the day Roger retired when he was 60.

These are the bare bones of Roger’s school and professional life. There was, however, very much more. Roger married Eve while studying for his A levels and they had one son, David. After Eve and David, there were two other loves in Roger’s life: the French language, in which he became fluent, and walking. These interests were happily combined when he organised and led walking holidays in France for many years. Being a Francophile, he was also heavily involved with the Fareham–Vannes twinning committee and also organising student exchanges between Portsmouth and Pierre et Marie Curie Universities. His walking and French gave him and Eve many friends, both here and in France.

Roger led a full and productive life, and Arthur Foot would have been proud of his former pupil.
Peter Trevett