Thanks to Joyce Affleck, Bill’s wife, and Chris Tetley (FS 63-67) for forwarding the following notice. William (Bill) Strickland Affleck (SH 45-51), who died on the 5th August 2023, aged 90. “Bill was born in 1932 in Kelowna, BC, Canada, where his family had emigrated. Following his father’s retirement, they returned to England on VJ Day 1945, to enable him to send his boys to his old public school, St Bees School in Cumbria. In 1945 Bill went to St Bees, a sporting school, not entirely suited to an academic boy, but he did well, became head of house in 1951, appeared in several school plays and made some long-lasting friends. His national service was spent mainly in Austria as a signals officer, and he continued to attend reserve camps in Scotland and Germany for the next ten years.
Bill was awarded a scholarship to Queen’s College, Oxford, to read Chemistry. He worked hard and achieved a 1st Class Honours degree. He spent his leisure time in the acting sphere, where he met his future wife, Joyce, who was studying geography at St Hilda’s College. At that time his other interests were climbing in the Lake District and the Pennines and in Switzerland, and his car – a little Austin.  Bill and Joyce married in 1957. They moved to London where he studied chemical engineering at Imperial College, gained a PhD and became an assistant lecturer.
Following the birth of their first child, Bill decided not to pursue an academic career and joined the Shell Oil Co as a research scientist and he moved to Cheshire to the Shell laboratories at Thornton, Ellesmere Port. During1966-7, now with two more children, the family spent a year in St. Louis, USA where Bill worked in another Shell laboratory, and they travelled extensively over the USA at weekends and holidays. They returned to England where Joyce began teaching. During 1977-9 the family spent two years in Ontario, Canada where Bill was in charge of an American laboratory. He retired in 1992 and the following year moved to Nailsworth with Joyce, who retired in 1993. They both fell in love with Nailsworth, and helped found and develop the Nailsworth News, and Bill became a councillor and eventually Deputy Mayor. For the News he wrote the business news for which he regularly visited Nailsworth shops and businesses to keep local people informed, writing pithy, witty articles which were widely enjoyed. He became a noted figure in the town as he walked his two Tibetan terriers. He loved the common where he took regular walks and spent a lot of time writing and reading and drawing maps and pictures mainly on the computer. Passionate about green energy and other topics, he had several letters published in the Times. He gave regular talks, immaculately prepared, to Probus clubs, etc on topics ranging from green energy to WW2 in Sicily.
Bill Affleck 1946	Bill Affleck 1948	Bill Affleck 1951
Throughout his life he enjoyed travel. His work had taken him on regular trips to the USA, Japan and parts of Europe and SE Asia. He loved driving and did some notable tips mostly in France and Italy. One year he put the car on the train to Ljubljana and drove to Athens and back and then home. Perhaps his favourite place, apart from home, was Cannero on Lake Maggiore in Italy where he and Joyce spent their honeymoon, and they returned several times. In 2007 most of the family accompanied them there for their Golden Wedding. The last trip there was in 2017 when they went to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary. It was on the return trip he became extremely ill and never again recovered his full strength. Bill was a very quiet man, with few words but all worth saying. He was a talented writer and a great ‘doer’; totally honest and straightforward, immensely kind, fond of animals and birds. Once in his student days he was described as ‘the most honest man in Oxford’. Sometimes he revealed high artistic talents, which he followed-through mainly with his computer graphics. Other organisations he involved himself with at various times were, Twinning with Leves, the Nailsworth Society, Nailsworth Probus, NCAT, N. Community Land Trust, and the Nailsworth Community Partnership (which he founded). He was the long serving Secretary of the Bristol and South West Branch of the St Beghian Society, and a dedicated supporter of his old school.”

 

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