Intended for healthcare professionals

Obituaries

Alan Holmes

BMJ 2021; 372 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n416 (Published 16 February 2021) Cite this as: BMJ 2021;372:n416
  1. Alan Craft

Alan Holmes was born in Whitley Bay and went to his local medical school in Newcastle. He had ambitions towards surgery but after taking the primary FRCS and training posts in orthopaedics he found himself as sole surgical registrar at Eston Hospital, Teesside, covering several hospitals. With a young family he decided that surgery was not for him, and he entered general practice in Dunston, Gateshead, where he remained for 27 years. His early surgical training did not go to waste, and he undertook regular endoscopy sessions at North Tyneside and Queen Elizabeth Hospitals. He was encouraged by another local GP to join the Territorial Army and thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of this, rising to major and second in command of 251 Field Ambulance. Alan’s norm was to be implacably calm, indubitably assuring, endlessly kind, always thoughtful, and considerate and selfless at all times. He was a modest gentle man.

Music played a big part in his life, and he sang in several choirs and played the organ in Gateshead and in retirement in Ford Church close to the Scottish border, where he was also church warden and a respected and involved member of the local community. Fascinated from childhood by trains, he had a large train set at home, and at his funeral his sister read the Auden poem “Night Mail.”

He leaves his wife, Kathleen; two daughters; and four grandchildren.

General practitioner Gateshead (b 1945; q Newcastle 1969), died from metastatic hypernephroma on 12 January 2021

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