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| 14 Mar 2015 | |
| Obituaries |
It is impossible to estimate the number of people whose lives were influenced and enriched by knowing Rodney Bambrick during his long, interesting and diverse life. His death occurred on 14 March 2015.
Born on 1 March 1927 and a Bangor Grammar School pupil from the age of seven until he left in 1944, Rodney was the consummate ambassador for the school and the education he received there, at The Queen’s University of Belfast – he insisted on ‘The’ – and as a world-wide traveller.
Rodney was a musician; music-lover – an ardent supporter of The Ulster Orchestra; composer; teacher, Head of History in Bangor Secondary School and a Senior Teacher in Bangor/ Gransha Boys’ High School; an author and exponent of excellence in the English language; and an enthusiast for all things which interested him, not least his immaculate garden at his Bangor home. If he did something, he did it well.
I met him at The Ulster Society of Organists and Choirmasters and remember him mostly as the Society’s long-serving Honorary Secretary. His monthly newsletters and annual reports were masterpieces of prose in musical English and delightful to read. He was Organist and Choirmaster at Queen’s Parade Methodist Church for many years. He was a composer and a champion of Allen Computer Organs from their very early days in Northern Ireland. He ‘adopted’ the Tonic Theatre organ when it became homeless, rebuilt it in Gransha Boys’ High School and sadly failed in his attempts to have it re-housed in BGS’s new buildings.
Rodney was always excellent company, full of life and magnanimous in all things. He exuded happiness and humour. Both were infectious. He was Bangor through and through, a gentleman and the finest of human beings. The world is a better place for the 88 years he spent in it and a much poorer place without him.
In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.
Ian Hunter
