05/07/1953 – 16/03/2019

Christopher Gogarty

05/07/1953 – 16/03/2019

Chris began his university life in October 1971 to read Chemical Engineering having achieved A levels in Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry and General Studies. Andy Clough, who had also attended The King’s School Pontefract started at the same time to read Economics. They were often seen together in that first term.

Chris had secured a room in Hetherington House, part of the Duryard Halls of Residence. With his bright ginger hair and strong Yorkshire accent he was immediately recognisable and with his outgoing personality he soon made his mark. Friends from that time can recount a number of pranks that he was involved in.

In the summer term 1972 he organised a party in the Duryard Halls Central Block to celebrate his 19^th birthday. Andy Clough turned up with a girl who attended some of the same lectures as him and Chris was very intrigued by her and quizzed Andy after the party about her. She was also a resident in the Duryard Halls in Moberly House. Chris turned up at her door one evening a few days later and invited himself in for coffee. She wasn’t too impressed as she was in the middle of writing an essay and tried her hardest to get rid of him! Her name was Elizabeth Jane Goebel, known to everyone as Jane. Chris continued to pursue her taking every opportunity to sit at the same table as her in the dining hall, walking up to the campus with her and so on and by the end of the term they were considered a couple.

During the summer holidays he worked at Frigoskandia, a frozen food warehouse and returned in the second year with a Ford Anglia that had originally belonged to his Auntie Beryl. He later swapped this for a Singer Chamois which he loved and Jane hated. Further summer jobs at Frigoskandia and selling ice cream from a van for Danny Oats meant he had the money to maintain this luxury of his own car as a student. He obtained a Third Class Honours Degree in Chemical Engineering in July 1974. Jane gained her degree in Psychology and decided to train as a teacher and secured a place at Sheffield City College of Education for the PGCE course. Chris applied to Sheffield University to do a Post-graduate Diploma in Business Studies. As his brother was at Sheffield University reading Mechanical Engineering and Marie Lawrence his girlfriend was at Hallam Polytechnic doing Home Economics it seemed sensible to flat share with them. Initially in Waddesly Lane and then in an old victorian mansion in Brincliffe Crescent it was a busy, but enjoyable time.

Jane secured a position as a teacher at Brewers Hill Middle School in Dunstable and Chris found a job as a trainee shop manager. This did not last long as all he seemed to spend his time doing was stacking shelves! He then got himself a job with British Aerospace in Stevenage, which he kept for about a year before moving to Kent Instruments in Luton as a Control Systems Engineer. Among other projects he worked on the Magnus North Sea Oil Platform.

On July 31^st 1976 Chris married Jane and they bought their first house 490 Hitchin Road, Luton. They spent the next three years doing the house up initially putting in central heating and then completely stripping each room in turn and redecorating. In June 1979 their first son Paul James was born and Jane became a full time Mum. When Chris’s brother Stuart and his wife moved to Montreal, Canada later that year, Chris began to investigate the possibility of making a similar move as the pay there was much better for qualified engineers. He secured a position with Stearns Roger in Calgary, Alberta and he and Jane with Paul now aged 2 and new-born baby Stephen Christopher moved to Calgary in October 1981. They bought a house 116 Brookmere Bay, Braeside and were soon thrown into their first Canadian winter. He and Jane then took the opportunity to learn to ski and so make good use of the snow.

Chris had been hired along with a large number of other non-Canadian engineers on the strength of the price of oil which made the development of the Oil Tar Sands in Alberta a viable proposition. He worked out at the Jumping Pound site leaving the house by 6 in the morning and not returning until 10.00 at night. He was then moved to a waste uranium extraction plant. Sadly, the price of oil dropped and the Oil Tar Sands projects got moth balled and the huge numbers of engineers recruited for the work were made redundant and Chris was one of these. With Jane 6 months pregnant with baby number 3 she was unable to go out to work and so they took the decision to return to the UK where Chris felt he had a better chance of getting another job. On returning to the UK in 1983 the young family stayed with Jane’s parents in Farnham where Andrew Michael was born. Chris found another job within 2 months with Taylor Instruments in Stevenage. They eventually bought a house in 1984 in Eaton Socon, St Neots where he lived the rest of his life.

Taylor Instruments was taken over by Combustion Engineering which was then taken over by ABB (which had absorbed Kent Instruments some years earlier so in a roundabout way he ended up back with the same group that he had started with!). He worked in a wide variety of places travelling to Dubai, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Sweden, China and The United States of America for different projects. He project-managed control systems for a Photographic plant in Shanghai, China, a Chambourcy Yogourt Plant, a Pharmaceutical Plant in Cork, Ireland, Blast furnace number 4 in Port Talbot, Wales among many others. He became a Chartered Engineer, a member of the Institute of Chemical Engineers, a Chartered Scientist and also qualified as a Safety Systems Engineer in 2009. He worked hard and supported his growing sons offering them opportunities to do things and encouraging them in the things they chose to do.

Chris like to play. He had played basketball in school and took this back up playing for fun with a like-minded group of people. He also owned several shotguns and went clay pigeon shooting and on occasions went out to shoot pigeons on a local farm. Jane had always wanted to learn to windsurf so in 1989 Chris bought her a level 1 course at Grafham Water Centre. Not to be outdone by his wife he then did the same course the following year. And so began the accumulation of windsurfing equipment. They joined Priory Sailing Club in Bedford where they made many friends. In 1998 Chris bought his first speed boat, all in pieces which he rebuilt and got back on the water. Both Jane and Chris then learnt to water ski and he water-skied at South Lake Ski Club. Little Paxton on January 1^st 2000. He sold that speed boat and bought another that did not work which he repaired and kept for a number of years at Boughton Lodge Water Ski Club before selling it to someone he had worked with on a number of projects. They both became qualified ski boat drivers and in 2001 Chris qualified as a RYA Power Boat Instructor. In 2004 Chris decided he wanted to learn to fly so enrolled himself on a course and got his certificate to fly in 2005. He bought himself a microlight which was damaged and rebuilt it, got it passed as airworthy and flew it on a number of occasions. However, after a couple of fatal flying accidents of people he had met, he decided to stop flying, and sold the microlight much to Jane’s relief. In 2006 they both became qualified scuba divers so that they could do some diving in the Red Sea while on holiday in Dahab. With the boys now grown and flown the nest, Chris and Jane took a number of activity holidays with Neilson going to Turkey, Greece, Egypt, and Kenya windsurfing and also learning to sail dinghies. After retiring, he took up golf and played at least three times a week, taking part in senior competitions and winning a number of events. He and Jane had been doing modern jive since about 1990 and on retirement took up ballroom and sequence dancing which introduced them to a whole new raft of friends and they even went on a number of dancing holidays. They joined the U3A and started a Modern Jive group which proved very popular.

In 1993 Chris project managed the building of a two storey extension on the front of the house to give another bedroom and shower room upstairs and a playroom for the boys downstairs. He retired in 2013 and promptly set about rearranging the house, initially knocking through into the extension upstairs to create a large master bedroom with en-suite. In 2014 he project managed the building of a small one storey extension on the front of the house to make a larger kitchen and to provide a utility room which Jane had always wanted.

Having always promised themselves they would travel once they retired, they visited New Zealand in January 2014 for the first time and again in 2016. They combined these trips with a stop off in San Diego to catch up with nephew Sean and his family when his brother Stuart was there at the same time. They fitted in a couple of sea cruises one in the western Mediterranean and one to the Canaries and a couple of river cruises on the Danube. Sadly, Chris was diagnosed with cancer of the rectum in January 2018 and although initially they thought it had been caught in time, when he went for surgery, they found secondary metastases in his liver. He underwent three rounds of chemotherapy, but after initial good results, it stopped working and Chris died on 16th March 2019.

Recollections of Christopher Gogarty : Early years by Stuart Gogarty

Chris was and always will be my kid brother just a year younger but always bigger stronger and never failed at anything he set his mind to. My first memory of my brother Chris was being chased around the cow field by a herd of dairy cows. At 3 and 4 years old we did not know the cows just thought we were leading them to be milked. They were giant bulls to little kids our age, and we saw them as giant raging bulls who were going to do us great harm. Just a day in the life with my brother Chris.

Born in Hemsworth, West Yorkshire, he was a rhesus negative baby and had to have blood transfusions to save his life at two weeks old. Primary education was received at the Sacred Heart primary school where we got the special experience of being taught by our mother for some of the time. After passing 11 plus Chris joined me at The Pontefract King’s Grammar School where he gained 5 A levels in Maths , Further Maths, Physics ,Chemistry and General Studies. The family also moved to South Kirkby, a typical mining village.

Much of our childhood weekends was spent when not in school at Golden Sands Caravan Park, Mablethorpe where our parents purchased a 40 ft trailer in addition had also a smaller Bluebird 4 birth. Many times we had family and friends staying and my Uncle Oswald and family also had a trailer making for an entertaining fun time for all.

Our father intended to open a vehicle demolition business and with him Chris and I built a workshop and began a Vehicle paint shop and repair business. Our father encouraged Chris and myself form an early age to learn car mechanics as he carried out all his own vehicle maintenance being an engineer. Together Chris and I successfully replaced the clutch plate on our own car, a gift from an uncle (Terry Bate), a faithful Morris 8, at the tender ages of 11 and 12. The property in South Kirkby ,had a large 1 acre garden and led to open farmland, ideal for riding the old Morris and a number of motorbikes around the fields. We also were given the task of installing central heating into our house when Chris was 11 and I was 12, our father had a lot of trust in our capability since he more or less left us to work it out with little supervision.

Father discouraged us from driving motorbikes on the road where the legal age was 16. A number of local boys died after crashing their newly purchased motorbikes. Our father did obtain a couple of old 3 wheeler vehicles but after seeing them in action considered them worse than motorbikes for safety handed over the car keys. The Reliant robin sprung a petrol leak that set it on fire. Father decided it was far safer that we drive the family cars. He considered that us breaking the law was better than motorbikes breaking his sons. Back in England in the mid 60’s, most  Police rode bicycles so not much chance of being pulled over.

We had great times with all our friends loaded into the family Bedford van head for the city disco’s. Loading up to 18 people into the van resulted in breaking the rear suspension a couple of times.

Chris took a job on the local market and ran a stall selling dressmaking material, initially just standing in for a school friend but then taking over running the stall. He also volunteered and DJ’d at the local youth club for a couple of years and even managed to talk the Kings school into holding its one and only school dance, the closest to a prom ever held at our “all boys” school to raise money for a rugby tour. Chris played rugby and basketball at school mand kept playing basketball until well into middle age.

Time flew by and University life soon came along where Chris met his wonderful wife Jane .