Downing 2010 cover opt b_Layout 1 - Downing College - University ...

DOWNING COLLEGE ASSOCIATIONand lived in Harlow in Essex, visiting Yugoslavia almost every year for holidaysor family visits. Chris and Seka also made the most of their rare linguisticpairing to commit themselves to voluntary work translating Christian literatureinto Serbo-Croatian at a time when such reading material was hardly welcomein communist Yugoslavia. This work they continued until Chris’s final months.Chris took early retirement after nine years in the position of financial directorof a Mercedes dealership, both sons having left home and graduated fromuniversity. Nick had studied Italian and German at Lancaster and Mark Serbo-Croat and Russian at Nottingham University – surely no coincidence as theyhad both spoken Serbian exclusively in the family home from an early age.In 1997, Chris and Seka moved to Belgrade, following their eldest son Mark’sdeparture there two years earlier to work for British publisher Longman. Afterthe NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 they moved to Herceg Novi, Montenegrofor several years, Chris teaching English at the Physiotherapy Institute in Igaloand carrying out freelance translation work. Chris never ceased to dumbfoundevery new acquaintance with his exceptional spoken Serbian which for allpractical purposes was indistinguishable from that of a native. More often thannot he saw no reason to immediately disclose who he was and thus blended inas no “real” foreigner could.In 2005 Chris and Seka moved to Novi Sad, where Mark was now living, andChris began taking on more and more translation work, registering a translationagency, Linguatrans, and also carrying out work for Mark’s translation companyOdista. He also served as a lay elder and treasurer of a local church. It was aroundthis time that he was diagnosed with colon cancer, too late to prevent it alsospreading to his liver. For the next three years Chris underwent regularchemotherapy and several surgeries but continued to live and work normally, withlittle to outwardly suggest illness. It was only a few weeks before his passing, whenhis health had begun to rapidly deteriorate, that he took on his last translationassignment, and declaring that he would be unable to take on any more. On thelast day of his life he said the last word his family remembers him saying, in a Serbianword, but also somehow very understatedly English: in answer to the doctor’s “Kakoste?” (“How are you?”), he weakly responded, “Onako” (“Oh, you know…”).Chris passed away at the all-too-young age of 60 in the early morning hoursof 22nd December 2009 and was buried in Novi Sad’s city graveyard, living justlong enough to see his third grandson born in late October, on the day of his60th birthday, and the death of his father at age 97 in late November. Chrisleaves wife Darinka, twin sister Rachel, sons Nick and Mark, daughters-in-lawRosie and Slađana and grandsons Harvey, Aidan and Luka.This obituary was prepared by Mark Daniels with the openingparagraph by Graham Woodard (1968) and Charles Aked (1968).32