trees. Other contractors and volunteers were also deployed on priority repair and maintenance work, including drains and fences and dealing with general ‘wear and tear’. Several people have recently joined our regular Wednesday afternoon work parties and we are always looking out for further new recruits to become Estates and Heritage volunteers to help us tackle the wide range of mainly outdoor jobs which regularly need attention.
Obituaries and farewells
It is my sad duty to record the recent passing of four more dedicated and enthusiastic supporters of the Museum.
In chronological order, skilled and inventive automotive engineer Alan Hill died in a local hospice on 26th October aged 70. Trading in the Guildford area as the aptly-named ‘Over The Hill Motor Company’, Alan was a slightly eccentric character with a great sense of humour who seriously disliked modern cars and worked almost exclusively on Morris Minor repairs, restoration and servicing. He also regularly promoted and attended our annual Morris and Austin Day, as well as maintaining both the Museum's and my own Minors for over 20 years.
Secondly, Roy Lomax died on 5th December aged 88; a proud RAF Halton apprentice with many engineering and management skills, to- gether with his wife Hilary, Roy became one of our very first volunteers in the mid-1980s, shortly after retirement from British Airways Engineering
The late Geoff Marlow at RAF Odiham in 2010 (Julian Temple).
after a long and accomplished aviation career. Still leading our Hawker Hurricane restoration project at the time of his unexpected death, Roy (and Hilary) made a considerable contribution to the Museum’s development for over 30 years, initially working as a leading member of our ERA Shed aircraft restoration team in the 1980s, restoring our Avro 504K and Viking amphibian replicas and building our SE5A replica from scratch. He also helped maintain and operate our ‘live’ Sopwith Camel and was one of its regular ‘pilots’ for public engine running demonstrations, but most notably took on the huge challenge of restor- ing our Hurricane to taxiable condition in 1998. Beside these achievements, Roy also served on our Health and Safety Committee, was a member of our Airfield Team, regularly helped deploy our aeroplanes to air shows and other off-site events and also participated in many other Museum activities, very often accompanied by Hilary.
Roy and Hilary Lomax in Edwardian costume on location in Devon for TV’s Edwardian Farm which featured the Museum’s Blériot aeroplane (John Downey).
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Notable former RAF pilot and aviation enthu- siast Geoff Marlow passed away in a nursing home on 12th December. Flying Gloster Meteors and Supermarine Swifts with No. 2 Squadron in Germany in the 1950s (during which time he met the charismatic Supermarine chief test pilot and world air-speed record-holder Mike Lithgow), after a career mainly in marketing, he lived in retirement in Byfleet and served until recently as both an active local councillor and also as Chair- man of Surrey County Council. Besides doing much for the local community, he enthusiastically supported Museum events and our on-going Byfleet Fire Station preservation project, with several grants, and in 2010 he even invited me to join him on a county councillors’ PR visit to RAF Odiham which ended with a most memorable
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