Downing College 2004 - University of Cambridge

working life was spent as a general practitioner. This was a role in which he becamea trusted friend as well as doctor to many Whitstable families. He was a large man,both in frame and personality, whose calm reassuring manner made him an easyperson to turn to in trouble. He had an intuitive understanding of the fact thatevery consultation had a psychological component at a time when such thingswere hardly spoken of. He gave the impression that visiting a patient at home wasa privilege. This writer cannot be the only medical student who chose generalpractice because of John’s influence. John spent the last 10 years before retirementas a medical officer in psychiatry. He had a rare ability to enter into the patient’sworld and to demonstrate that what he found there could be accepted and copedwith. Colleagues used to call on him, even after his retirement, to calm some oftheir more problematical patients. He was an eccentric and lived in a house, fullof exotic treasures, in Whitstable in which another eccentric doctor, SomersetMaugham, grew up. After retirement he moved to Sandhurst, Kent where hetended his animals and his garden with the affection he had shown his patients.He leaves a wife, Stella, 3 children and 1 grandchild.Andrew PolmearThis obituary was sent to us by Robert Drayson (1939)Richard Anthony Potter (1970)Richard came up to Downing from Abingdon School to read Veterinary Medicineand, although no schoolboy oarsman, swiftly established himself as the stroke ofthe 1st VIII and became Captain of Boats in his third year. In addition to the normalduties of the captaincy, Richard spent long hours coaching junior crews andencouraging those who were new to the sport. Qualifying as a vet in 1976, he joineda practice in the Oxfordshire countryside where he had been raised and where hewould spend all his professional life. He became senior partner in 1999. InitiallyRichard practised general farm animal medicine but by the 1990’s had establishedhimself as one of the country’s foremost pig-practitioners. Much sought after as aspeaker and as an author, he was an examiner for the Royal College of VeterinarySurgeons and in 2000 was elected as Vice-President of the Pig Veterinary Society.But Richard was much more than a highly respected and successful vet. At heart acountryman and talented naturalist, he took great pride in his garden and its colonyof newts. He was also a fly-fisherman who made his own rods and smoked his ownfish and a painter whose watercolours adorned the walls of his home. It wastherefore particularly cruel that Richard should be struck down in 2000 by thecancer that would finally kill him. Bravely supported by his wife Amanda and hisfour children, he faced his final illness with the same optimism, good humour anddetermination that characterised his whole life. Richard died on 11 May 2003.Gareth Davies (1971)33