Michael William Atkinson

Michael William Atkinson passed away on 9th June 2019 of the oesophagus cancer of which he endured extremely bravely with remission in the middle 2 years.

Eliazbeth Atkinson shared with us:

He often talked fondly of his time at King Edwards when we met at Cambridge in January 1970. He talked of his time in the sixth form musical appreciation group- possibly with the Maggots- which got him into Trinity Hall as he discussed Beethoven’s string quartets with the senior tutor who was equally keen on them! He read Engineering with an MOD scholarship and met me at New Hall doing History in his second year. I’m afraid I was never as good at the Samba walk as his Q M’s dancing partner, Angela Sykes (QM), who may remember him!
 
Michael married in 1973 and moved to Leeds for his work with the MOD. Our son was born there in 1977. We moved down to Surrey in 79 and had our 2 daughters in the 80s. I taught locally for 27 years, but his career changed from heavy production engineering to electronics research with RACAL and the oil industry. Finally he took on computing and ended up working in 2 local Universities. 

His first love however was always the geography of the hills, mentioning his cycling trips with Fred Laughan a lot in the Lakes in his teens. We both retired in 2014 and enjoyed many touring rail holidays all over Europe together. He had taught himself bass guitar at 16, apparently in a group (The Trust) which involved a Physics master. From there he expanded playing with a reggae band, rock groups, various jazz groups, big bands, ukulele groups and double bass for orchestras as well as joining a local choral society and drama group on stage. 

The family always said life wouldn’t be worth living for him if he couldn’t play and he actually only missed one week of his last jazz group at the end, when he was running on adrenalin only. He bore his illness extremely bravely but died young at 69. However we have all been encouraged by the fact that he missed Covid and the recent problems in the world. 
People may remember his continuous smile.