Richard
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Cultural Tourism as Creative Tourism from Klewel video on Vimeo.
Many thanks to those who wrote in the past week. The family bereavement was my wife’s stepfather, Richard, who died suddenly and very unexpectedly at the age of 56 on November 30. The past weeks have been very tough for my mother-in-law and for Sofie. The one bright spot, if it can be called that, is the mass of well wishes my mother-in-law has received from people, particularly academics (Richard was a professor of tourism at the University of Strathclyde), around the world.
I will always remember Richard as a convivial, larger-than-life character. It was only last month that I was telling friends of the time at the Saatchi Gallery in London when Richard, sitting cross-legged on the floor reading the Guardian, was mistaken by a couple of visitors for a sculpture by Duane Hanson. I actually watched for a good thirty seconds while they pondered how lifelike Richard looked before being given an awful shock when he turned the page.
It was ironic really because Richard was in fact one of the most animated people I have ever met, particularly around the dinner table over a good meal and a bottle of wine. Indeed, his lively tableside manner only really made sense the other day, when Sofie sent me a link to the above video of a lecture which Richard gave a couple of months ago. He was exactly the same in everyday conversation as he was at the lectern. He will be very greatly missed.
Professor Richard Prentice (Scotsman)
1 Comments
February 1st, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I am a lecturer in Geography at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle upon Tyne in England and I learnt geography as an undergraduate with Richard. He was an interesting man who was very kind to me in my first year when I was very homesick.I kept in touch with Richard at various stages of his life – when he lived in Durham with his first wife Wendy my husband and I would go down for Sunday lunch. We went to Swansea for the weekend to stay with them when they lived there and on another occasion we spent a day with him in Bristol whilst he photographed buses! Later I took my family to visit him and his second wife in Dundee. I found out that he was in Sunderland and went down to meet him for lunch once there.
About fifteen of us who were at Liverpool together have an egroup and we meet up every year to catch up. For a long time Richard wouldn’t come on these trips as he told me that he regarded his early life in Liverpool as a separate life which happened long ago.
I met him again at a geography conference in London last August and he seemed to have changed his mind. We had a trip organised for the first weekend in December but he told us that he couldn’t make it as he had to be in New Zealand . We were all looking forawrd to meeting up with him this year and the last time he wrote he sent me a photo of himself and myself as 18 year old students.
When I told my geography friends about Richard’s death they were all saddened to hear the news. He was well liked and well respected by us – we always knew he would go far! He was an original and a very kind person, we shall not see his like again. Please send our condolences to his wife and family.
Yours sincerely,
Cath White