Roger Buckley Curteis

GEDCOM Note

BIOGRAPHY send from Alice Curteis (alice.curteis© googlemail.com) on 13th March 2009 to Liz Curteis (lizcurteis© hotmail.com) (Elizabeth Curteis)Dear Mum Welcome and thank you for being here to celebrate Roger's life — his achievements and his special personal qualities — and to sing the hymns he chose for us to sing today. He was born in Dudleston, at Pias Warren and, although he spent quite a few years elsewhere, first when his father work took the family to London, then at university in Cambridge, in India during the war, and a few years working in Peterborough, more than 65 of his 90 years were spent here in Dudleston, almost all of them at Plas Yolyn. All his working life he was involved in something that in some way made use of his skills as a mechanical engineer. During the war he worked on an island in Bombay harbour, degaussing ships - that is demagnetizing them - so that they wouldn't attract mines. After that, in Peterborough, he was at Perkins Diesel's, developing engines. He hated the long hours indoors and wanted to get out in the light. This was why, in 1949, he decided to join his father, who had retired from the navy and come to Plas Yolyn to run the farm here. He loved his cows — they all had names - and he milked them himself for twenty-five years non-stop. This is the period we four remember best of course because it lasted the whole of our childhood. We remember waiting for Dad to wake up when he fell asleep in a chair in the evenings, worn out after his day on the farm. When he stopped farming in 1974 at the age of 55, he looked around for something new to do and that's when the first chain machine arrived at Plas Yolyn. No one could have guessed that it would lead to Curteis Ltd., a business and factory employing, at times, over 100 people. At the beginning it was just Dad, sitting endlessly patient for hours on end, trying to get the machine going, training himself, producing lengths of chain that Henry would sell in London. Each time a new machine was acquired, he would love driving all the way to the machine factories in Germany and Italy and picking up his new baby, whereas anyone else would have flown over and then had the machine sent by truck. The way the business developed thereafter is a whole other story — but from the point of view of Rogers story the important thing is that it gave him another 20 years of work in a field that he loved, surrounded by machines — he only stopped working when he was 75, around the time that he developed the first symptoms of Parkinson's disease. He had lots of interests outside work and there isnt time to mention all of them, but perhaps the one that stands out is - cars. His life-long love of cars was legendary. He taught himself to drive in the Wolsey at the age of 10 and then taught his older sister Bridget. The car you see on the back page of your service sheet is the Riley, which he particularly loved. He always serviced his cars himself and he was a fantastically skilful driver. As well as the cars themselves, he also loved maps and routes and journeys. He would always know the best way to get to any destination in Britain and if you were passing through PY in those pre-satnav days he would give you meticulously prepared advice, giving road numbers, distances and estimated time to every point on your journey. In recent years he loved being driven around by friends, family or carer's, especially into the hills - to places Ruabon Mountain, Allt y Badi, the Horseshoe Pass, the Eglwysyg Rocks, and so on. As his sight began to go he would still know exactly where he was - even if the driver didn't.One of the great things about Dad was that he treated everyone the same - as a fellow human being - and also that he accepted people for what they were. This meant that even with his children and grandchildren he didn't have expectations that were difficult to fulfill - he just let us be the people we are. So when, for example, he realized that none of the four of us was going to want to take over the farm he just accepted that and moved on. He was almost never angry and when he occasionally gave us advice, it was always because he cared about us and not because he wanted to interfere. Such as this attitude of acceptance and making the most of whatever circumstances faced him became more and more apparent as time went by. After he started being affected by the Parkinson disease and he had to give up formal work, he reinvented himself, time and time again, whether it was working in the wood, researching and writing the history of Plas Yolyn, writing poems, learning and reciting poetry, and drawing, especially portraits. Each of these he did as if it was a job - he made it his business to find meaning in everything he did, however little he could do physically. He lived in the moment, and whatever he was doing, whoever he was talking to, whatever he was talking or thinking about — that was what was important. When all he had left to do was to exercise his mind, that's what he did — he loved words and crosswords and he was in the middle of last Thursday's crosswords when he died. On that last day he also said “I've had a wonderful life - and life is wonderful”. He had always avoided negative thinking. Perhaps it was in his nature or from his upbringing, but he also worked consciously on this as a young man and maybe this is why he managed to stay so incredibly positive until the end. Anyone who is unwell enough to need a carer would be forgiven for being a bit depressed, and perhaps a little grumpy. He was never depressed or grumpy. The carer's who came to the house loved working with him because he was always so positive and entertained them with songs, reciting poems, telling jokes and stories. This is why we're ending this service with the unusual choice of Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport — it was the song he used to make us all sing to give him the momentum he needed to get up out of his wheelchair to walk round the kitchen table for a few minutes each day. And it reminds us of his sense of humour and fun. There are so many other things I could tell you about him — like how much he did for other people, especially fixing things, like tractors, cars, bikes, chairs, anything at all — always entirely patiently, no matter how long it took him. And he was church warden here for over 30 years, doing all the work that that entailed. If you couldn't find Dad at Plas Yolyn, you would often find that he was up here, maybe winding the clock. The underfloor heating system was his idea. And he and Frank Hockenhull apparently used to say they spent more time up there mending the roof than worshipping inside the church. And last - but not least – Id like to pay tribute to the loyal and loving support that he gave and received from Liz for 56 years.