OBITUARY
Edmund John Garnet Clark
06.01.1926 – 11.10.2012
The man known to all of us as John was born Edmund John Garnet Clark along with his twin sister Rosemary on 6 January 1926 interrupting the 21st birthday celebrations of the under nanny Mabby who holding no grudges later became one of his children’s godmothers. John and his twin were the youngest of 6 children and were brought up in the family home of Red Lodge in Tadworth, Surrey.
He went to Prep school at St Peters, Seaford, Sussex and then on to Canford, Wimborne, Dorset where he excelled at sport. He appears extensively in the book of ‘Cricket for Schools’ by J T Hankinson first published in 1946. After school he went to Oriel College Oxford where he was awarded a blue at tennis.
At the end of the 2nd World War he was commissioned into the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve minesweeping in the Mediterranean based in Malta.After the war he joined family firm Gollin & Co a worldwide import and export merchant, headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. It was in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens under a Kohai tree that he met Alison Bridge. They were married on 24 September 1949 at Kingswood in Surrey. Their married life started in an apartment in Chelsea just off the Kings Road where Nigel their eldest son was born on 21 Sept 1950. In 1951 they moved to Dover Barton near Reigate. Richard was born 11 July 1953 followed by Katherine on 14 February 1957. John became managing director of Gollin Europe moving to its new European headquarters in East Croydon.
In the late 1970s he helped with the start up of an office furniture manufacturing company and in May 1978 the family moved to Millstones. In the early 1980’s he helped set up a company exporting machinery and components to office furniture manufacturers in Nigeria. In the mid 80s the company expanded to include supply of wood-effect laminated chipboard to office and domestic furniture manufacturers in the UK.
John retired in the late 1980s to concentrate on the upkeep of the extensive gardens at Millstones, playing golf and enjoying from time to time a few glasses of Famous Grouse. In the 1990s the gardens were opened annually for the village and as Chairman he helped in obtaining Lottery funding to re-furbish the Coronation Hall. He and Alison were also very involved with the St Mary’s church and contributed to and helped with the creation of St Mary’s chapel.
He enjoyed entertaining friends and seeing family at Millstones. Especially enjoying a game of croquet. He was kind, sensitive, thoughtful, very welcoming and sociable, loved having his family around him. He was a great conversationalist always having a good listening ear. He was also the most polite and appreciative man, an observation that many have made. He continually thanked people for any small thing that they did for him. One lovely young Doctor at Bognor said he was the only person to have ever said ‘well done’ to her and she would never forget it. He cherished Alison at all times and they had a long and happy marriage lasting 63 years and have never had a serious cross word between them. Amongst the things he has passed on to the next generation is a strong sense of right and wrong, of the importance of behaving with decency to others, of duty and honour but also a great sense of humour with fun and enjoyment. To sum up he was a wonderful husband, brother, father, uncle, grandfather and great grandfather and friend and the legacy he leaves behind is considerable, as he has enriched our lives in so many ways by being part of them and therefore never leaving us.