John Booth

John Booth qualified from the Turner Dental School in 1956. After National Service he studied endodontics at Ann Arbor Michigan and then completed his DDS at Toronto.

He returned to England and practiced in the well-known Oxford practice with Peter Ellis, and taught part time at UCH Dental School. In 1975 he moved to Australia to practice endodontics with Dr Geoff Heathersey, who popularised endodontic medication with calcium hydroxide. John was a very successful dentist who lived life to the full. He was a charming and very talented hard working man. His great passion was sport, and he was a low handicap golfer all his life.

As a young dentist he won his Derbyshire county gold championship, and after retirement he played for the Australian Senior golf team. He actually played 400 courses around the world.

He also played hockey and squash to a very high level. He won the Hong Kong squash championship during his time there doing National Service. He was a devoted family man with three sons. After retirement he spent a lot of time in voluntary dental work. He was a regent for the Academy of Dentistry International Asia Pacific region promoting dental care in the developing countries. He died from a lymphoma in Adelaide on February 19th aged 68.

P. E.

Henry Ernest Gray

Henry Ernest Gray died on 7 February 2002 at the age of 93. He was born in Glasgow on 16 July 1908, the son of a foreman pattern maker in a shipyard. Despite the physical disability of severe congenital deformity of both feet, he was an able and successful student. From 1928, he studied dentistry at the University of Glasgow, winning a string of medals and prizes along the way including the Glasgow Dental Hospital Board of Governors' Medal for the Best Student on the course. He qualified LDS RFPS in 1933 then spending a year in private practice and a year as a house surgeon at Glasgow Dental Hospital. In 1935, he embarked on a career as a school dental officer, moving to Leeds where he remained until 1947 when he moved to Derby and the school dental service for Derbyshire. In 1939, he married Evelyn Grant, a school nurse. A kind and friendly Scotsman, I knew him as an enthusiastic member of the East Midlands Branch with an encyclopaedic memory on all subjects dental who could still accurately quote the price of a gallon of petrol as far back as 1937! He still both drove and serviced his own car until his eighties.

His wife Evelyn survives him, together with his daughter Jean, his son-in-law and two grandsons.

D. V. H.

Kenneth Edmund Clokey

Ulster born Normandy veteran and one of the senior practicing dental surgeons in England, Kenneth Clokey died aged 81. In spite of debilitating illness following war service he went on to become one of the oldest practicing dental surgeons in England, retiring shortly before his 79th birthday.

Kenneth Edmund Clokey was born in Belfast on 17 April 1920, the only child of Major E. H. Clokey and his wife Gertrude, less than twenty months after the end of the First World War in which his father won the Military Cross at the Battle of the Somme. At the age of five, Kenneth moved with his parents to Wimbledon and he was educated at Kings College, Wimbledon. In 1938, Kenneth was accepted by Guys Hospital to start training for MRCS LRCP and LDS, and he also joined the London Irish Rifles territorial army based at the Duke of York's Chelsea in the same year.

In September 1939, his medical studies came to an abrupt end as he was sent to the officer training unit at Blenheim Barracks prior to being commissioned as a 2/LT in the Royal Ulster Rifles. After an initial posting in Ballymena and then in Angelsey, in 1942 he was promoted to captain and appointed as intelligence officer to 29th Armoured Brigade of 11 Armoured Division in preparation for the Normandy landings. On June 11 1944, Clokey landed with advance units of 29 Armoured Brigade on Juno Beach near Beny sur Mer, and later became engaged in heavy fighting during the breakout and capture of Antwerp.

He always prided himself on the quality of his work.

Kenneth was to lose many of his closest friends during these battles and always counted himself as lucky rather than brave to have survived. In April 1945, his unit liberated Begen-Belsen and the horror of that camp was something to which he seldom referred but about which much is now known. When the war ended they had reached Schleswig on the Baltic coast. He was quickly repatriated to England where on recommencing his medical studies he was taken ill again after losing a kidney and part of his larynx and was, at one point, given only weeks to live. He recovered largely thanks to some intensive nursing at the military hospital in Roehampton where he was to meet his future wife Brenda Buckton, whom he married in 1948. Six years later he qualified from Guys Hospital as a dental surgeon and was admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

In 1953 Kenneth set up in general practice in Sanderstead, Surrey, and while building a large and loyal practice he served on many NHS and dental committees including the Secretary of State's Dental Advisory Committee and the Croydon LDC of which he was vice chair in the early 1980's. He always prided himself on the quality of his work. This was reflected when a recently emigrated patient returned from South Africa twice a year to continue with his treatment. In 1995 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. Clokey was a founder member of the Croydon South Rotary Club, which was set up in 1968. He served as president from 1972-73 and remained an active member until very recently. A keen and talented painter, Kenneth had a number of his works exhibited, although they were more usually to be found adorning the walls of his surgery or waiting room. Following enforced retirement due to major heart surgery in 1998, the year of his golden wedding, Kenneth spent his last few years organising, as secretary, 150 volunteer stewards at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, a role which he continued to fulfil until three weeks before his death. His wife Brenda survives him with their son John born in 1960.

B. C