Part 69
Obituary
As one grows older, it’s fact of life that more and more of one’s friends and relatives succumb to death. I read about old school friends or people I have met from later periods in my life who have passed away.
However, when a current close friend, a person I would normally see a couple of times a week, to share some news or to just have a giggle, unexpectedly passes, there is a very real sense of shock and loss.
Alan Douglas was the first member of the ExoTech team after Peter. He left us last week after suffering a heart attack. He was a couple of months short of his eightieth birthday. He and I first met when reading poetry at the Poet’s Corner of a local arts festival. Although our poetry was very different in style, we both appreciated and respected each other’s work. Most of Alan’s poetry was acerbic (cynical) but terribly funny. To use the English term, he took the mickey out of his encounters with any form of bureaucracy but did so with great good humor.
To start from the beginning, despite having every appearance of being a typical Englishman, Alan was born in New Haven, Connecticut in the USA in 1942, where his father taught at Yale University. His father was Irish and his mother Austrian.
After the end of World War Two, Alan and his mother travelled to Austria where Alan’s early schooling took place. He surprised all of us from time to time by breaking into fluent German, or should I say Austrian?
He was then sent to Scotland where he completed his secondary schooling at a well-known Public School (now referred to as a Private School). Only the British could confuse us with seemingly bizarre uses of the English language.
Not too much is known about his working life after school. He did not attend university, although he certainly would have had the capacity for it. He did some Church work for a while, which included the setting up of talks and seminars which is where he first met Peter Warren.
Peter’s Tribute to Alan Douglas
ExoTeam Member Two
Many people will remember Alan Douglas for many reasons.
- For us, he was the first-ever ExoTeam Member. A few years ago, I told him I needed to create a team to help make ExoTech happen, and he started to introduce me to some of his contacts. Just after ExoTeam welcomed its 250th member, Alan dropped the body and moved on with that as a terrific feather in his cap.
- Alan was a constant supporter, encourager and a great contributor.
- My wife and I will always remember him because it was he who pushed me to take steps which resulted in meeting my wife Shirley.
- I shall remember him because he was a constant supporter in my blackest hours. And some of those hours were black indeed.
- I shall also remember when I first met him thirty years ago and he directed and created what we called the New Horizons Seminar at the London Hilton and again at the Wembley Stadium in London – seminars that revitalized hundreds of people.
- Many others I do not ever know will remember him for the fact that in the early days of our Church he was a stunning recruiter and did an enormous amount to contribute to the survival of our Church in those times.
Alan was a fine person, a very positive one, and one who helped make the world a better place.
When ExoTech has a physical office, it will have in its Reception a marble plaque to Alan Douglas, ExoTeam Member 2, so all of us may remember him fondly into the far future.
Goodbye Alan.
For now.
The main thing that emerges from family memories was Alan’s huge love of cars and driving. He married for the first time in 1976 and produced three children, Alex, Richard and Katherine. One of Richard’s earliest memories of his father was being driven in a sports car with its soft top down, enjoying a rare moment of glorious sunshine as they drove across England’s “green and pleasant” land.
In the 1980s, Alan formed a mini cab and courier service with the clever name of Teleportation. He could not resist driving some of the vehicles himself whenever the opportunity arose.
Later, he sold the company and became a taxi driver, still firmly attached to his love of four wheels. Then, in retirement, he still enjoyed helping friends, driving them in and around his hometown of East Grinstead.
He remarried on October 23rd, 1999. His wife Maria, originally from the Philippines, already had a son, Dominic, from a previous marriage. He and Maria had one child, Madeline, and they lived in a delightful old house in De la Warr Road. Dominic subsequently married Zyra and produced two amazing children, Mia and Kylo, who formed a close attachment to their grandfather whom they insisted on calling darling.” The house was large enough for both families to reside in.
The overriding impression one got from knowing Alan was his huge capacity for caring, especially his family. He was a thoughtful, loving, and caring father which extended to his grandchildren in particular. Above all, he helped others whenever he could.
The biggest favor he did for me occurred shortly after we had exchanged some of our writings with each other. He asked me to listen to the story of an incredible new computing system that would take Information Technology to a whole new level. I was sceptical because I had never really understood the working of a computer other than to type or to send and receive emails. If I didn’t understand current computing, how on Earth would I possibly understand a new concept?
Remarkably, I did understand it to the degree that I realized its huge potential. Alan then asked me if I would be interested in writing a couple of books for Peter Warren which would tell the story of his creation of ExoTech. The second book would be a futuristic novel which revolves around a world in which ExoBrain is fast becoming the premier computing system on the planet.
Fascinated, I joined the ExoTech team and have been working with Peter and the rest of his team ever since.
Thank you, Alan. You had the perception of recognizing a good thing when you saw it.
I would like to end this with the following poem as a tribute to a really good friend.
Hard drive of memories.
2nd April 2021
I am Alan Douglas’ computer, his loyal suffering servant.
For years now I bore the daily invasion of Alan’s fingers
on my keyboard, constantly looking for something he typed
just a few minutes ago or a document he filed and forgot.
Despite this I welcomed his daily intrusion to keep me busy.
What Alan wrote was often so funny, a wry comment
on the insanities of you humans but with compassion
for fellow travellers on tomorrow’s road to madness.
He could be biting about bureaucratic roadblocks
preventing any normal logic when filling in forms
or the inevitable “no” to a simple request.
I enjoyed the moments when visitors invaded his office,
whether it was his darling smiling granddaughter Mia
whose vast imagination and cute phrases lit up his days
or friends who called in for coffee and an amusing chat
as Alan regaled them with funny memories and adventures
or by reading one of his satirical poems that I had recorded
in “my documents” or some other place he could never find.
I know from emails and chatty visitors how Alan enriched
others’ lives by kindness and humor, ever willing to drive
friends and others to the Hill, or schools or Heathrow
with cavalier nonchalance as he zipped in and out of traffic.
He was intolerant of fools, railing against official insanities
but always willing to offer a helping hand to anyone.
I have been privileged to be his instrument of communication,
reaching out far and wide to friends, past and present
and even his perceptive editing of other writers’ work
snipping away at extraneous verbiage to round off a work
like trimming a Bonsai tree to achieve perfect symmetry.
I observed a man of deep intellect, hidden beneath a veneer
of wry clownish humor and pretended forgetfulness.
He may have pushed the delete button of his long life
but my hard drive still contains many memories of Alan,
the man, the father, grandfather and friend to his community!
“Farewell for now.” Chris and Hero Dresser.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.