Roy Leonard Dommett (1933-2015)
2017; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2056-6166
Autores Tópico(s)Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management
Resumo[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Roy Dommett was bom on 25 June 1933 and married on 12 November 1955 to Marguerite Patricia Elizabeth Dawson, with whom he had seven sons and one daughter, so in dying on 2 November 2015 he just missed celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary. He was very much a Hampshire man, never losing his accent, and a family man, enjoying time with the younger generations of Dommetts whenever possible. He delved into his family history, finding several interesting links to the past on both sides and planning to publish some stories his mother had written. After Itchen Grammar School, where he studied aircraft engineering in the sixth form, he took a First in Aeronautical Engineering at Bristol University in 1954, a major achievement for his working-class background. His course unusually included an English module to encourage clear communication in written work. Once graduated and working at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), he moved into the field of 'rocket science'. His family was unaware for many years of his role in the development of defence systems, including Blue Streak and Polaris missiles. Through sharing a room with Alan Browning, musician, rapper enthusiast, and friend of Peter Kennedy, at the RAE's hostel in 1954, he became a founder member of Farnborough Morris. He also joined Border Morris, a local Cotswold team, and helped to found Thames Valley Morris. Around this time he also learned to play the piano accordion. He was invited to join Abingdon Morris through Frank Purslow and danced regularly with them from September 1960 until 1971, supporting the team through a difficult period. Three of his sons, Simon, Michael, and Stephen, danced with Abingdon at various times to help make up team numbers. As someone from a working-class background, he felt close to the old dancers. He discovered that that his father, Len, had worked briefly with Jack Hyde of Abingdon and Arnold Woodley of Bampton, recovering scrap towards the end of the Second World War. Roy was the last link between the early twentieth-century collectors and the present. His morris collecting started in 1958, as did his calling for social dances. Initially he copied dance material from the Cecil Sharp microfilms in 1960, followed by collecting trips to the Cotswolds by public transport, generally with Frank Purslow. He interviewed old dancers from Abingdon, Bampton, Bidford, Eynsham, and Ilmington, and discovered material on several other Cotswold traditions. The involvement with Abingdon actually sparked off his hobby of filming and recording morris in 1962 because of his fear that the team, and maybe others, would not survive and that no one else was making this sort of record of Cotswold morris teams. He even bought a car in order to attend practices once the Radley to Abingdon railway branch line closed down. He became firm friends with Eric 'Tubby' Reynolds, whom he met in 1967 at the National Folk Week, and through him became involved with Bath City Morris. Roy and his family became involved in the local mumming tradition in 1963, and members of the Dommett family still go out with Crookham Mummers every Boxing Day. In the 1980s he was involved as teacher and/or musician with three local women's teams, Fleur de Lys, Minden Rose, and Fleet. He was also welcomed by several other teams as he was happy to visit and run workshops on whatever topic they wanted, often just to reassure them that what they were doing was working well but what about trying a different chorus? When not wearing the kit of one of his 'regular' teams, he wore a special outfit crafted by Marguerite, called Andy Pandy, thus instantly standing out from the crowd. His work meant he travelled all over the world, visiting the US over a hundred times. By this time he had found morris to be the perfect antidote to office life and was able to make new friends wherever he went. After retiring in 2000 he was involved in the British Rocket Oral History Project and tying up loose ends on some of his work projects often clashed with the documenting of his morris research. …
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