Page 30 - The Old Ratcliffian 2010

The Old Ratcliffan 2010 | Obituaries Roger Peter Carron Old Ratcliffian 1945 - 1951 13th June 1932-18th October 2009 Born in Eastbourne, Sussex on June 13th 1932, Roger attended Grace Dieu Manor and Ratcliffe College. He studied law at Cambridge and the Inns of Court, London. He was a barrister-at- law and a member of Gray’s Inn, London. He served as a Second Lieutenant with the Sixth Queen Elizabeth’s Own Ghurkha Rifles towards the end of the guerrilla emergency in Malaya. On completing his National Service, he returned to London to sit his Bar Finals at the Inns of Court. He was called to the English Bar in 1962. It was during this period that he met his future wife, Eileen Dupuch of Nassau, Bahamas, who was also preparing for her Bar Finals. After a short stint in chambers in London, he joined East Midland Allied Press’ Peterborough Evening Telegraph to prepare himself for a career in journalism. He and Eileen were married in Nassau on January 13, 1963. He joined the family newspaper, eventually becoming its managing editor and a director, and with his wife, who became the third generation publisher of The Tribune, the Bahamas’ leading newspaper, headed a media group that included the newspaper, radio and the Internet. In his spare time he enjoyed his weekly game of golf. He was taken suddenly ill in October last year and died a week later on October 18, 2009 of complications from a heart attack. He was 77 years old. Eileen Dupuch Carron The following obituary was published in the funeral From Grace Dieu he graduated to Ratcliffe College in Leicester, booklet. Grace Dieu’s upper school. He excelled in sports at both schools, heading the cricket team, and setting records in track “Roger Peter Carron, only child of the late Penry and Muriel and the high jump. It was then on to Christ College, Cambridge, Carron was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, on June 13, 1932. and the Inns of Court, London. However, between Cambridge For the rest of his life, the number 13, marked many and the Inns, he did his National Service. After basic training, milestones in his life. He considered it his lucky number. Not he chose a regiment stationed in Germany so that he could be only was he born on the 13th, but his wife was also born on the nearer his mother and grandmother. 13th and was called to the Bahamas Bar on the 13th. He always However, a select few from his group were invited to join the said that all good things happened to him and his wife on the elite Ghurkha regiment. He was one of them. Commenting thirteenth. on how staggered he was to read of Roger’s death last week, He grew up in London during the dreadful bombing of that city Sir Jack Hayward, honorary chairman of The Grand Bahama and recalls as a little boy being hurriedly zipped into his little Port Authority, wrote: “I am sure you know that to be selected jump suit and, with Grandma Hanbury tightly holding his small as a Ghurkha officer was very special. Officers were chosen hand, running to the nearest air raid shelter when the sirens to lead this magnificent fighting force only if they possessed started to drone and the V-1 appeared in the night sky to buzz extraordinary leadership and courage.” bomb London. For Gran and Roger the nearest shelter was a He served during the Malayan Emergency, which was a guerrilla cavernous bank vault. war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and the He was only eight when Hitler decided to pulverize London with Malayan National Liberation Army. It ended in a British victory day and night bombing — the Blitz of London had started. He against an attempted Communist revolution in Malaya. remembered the fires. He had nightmares of a magnificent city It was this training that helped him face without flinching the reduced to rubble. Fear was his constant companion. challenges that he was to encounter in the Bahamas during his His mother had joined the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). His 47 years here. father was cut off in Sri Lanka, where he had a law practice and It was during his preparation for the Bar finals that he met his extensive estates. Roger was raised by his grandmother during future wife, Eileen Dupuch of Nassau. She was also doing her those terrible years. As the bombing worsened, he was sent as a Bar finals. A member of Gray’s Inn, he was called to the English boarder to Grace Dieu Manor Preparatory School, located in the Bar in 1962. The couple was married on January 13, 1963. lovely Charnwood Forest in the Midlands. It was a safe haven for They have one son, Robert. young boys during the war years — a home away from home. Many years later his son, Robert, followed in his footsteps as a Roger Carron suffered a heart attack on Saturday, October 10, boarder at the school. and died in the Cleveland Clinic, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Sunday, October 18th.” 0