David Charlton

30 years in ICL, 1967 – 97

Customer Service, Training, Defence Sales and High Performance Systems

David’s career began in the RAF, when he left school in Hong Kong and joined as an apprentice at RAF Halton. While there, he specialised in electronics particularly in support of the V Bomber force and this took him around the UK and around the world.

Towards the end of his career in the RAF, he was stationed in East Anglia. Here, he met and married Helen and they later had one son, Matthew. David then joined English Electric as a customer engineer and begun his career in IT at Minerva Rd on System 4 and moved to Letchworth Region of CS. He was promoted to Field Manager and joined London North Region to manage the big installations we serviced there. As a Service Manager at BACS he made a considerable contribution to ICL retaining the service contract there.
David was later selected to become a trainer for Customer Engineering as it faced the challenges of new technologies and needed to move its engineers into much wider, customer facing roles. Although based at Wokefield Park and Beaumont, he landed up travelling to Hong Kong, Sydney, Singapore and elsewhere doing his best to help men go forward in their careers. He later joined the Sales Organisation and his contributions were recognised several times by Gold, Silver and Bronze Quality Awards.

He had a lot of qualities, which many of us got to know and respect. He was a committed man, capable, cultivated and a stickler for getting things just right, even if it meant staying up all night. In work he displayed exceptional application and awareness. This was recognised in the RAF and he was invited to enter the Officer Selection Process, which he declined being somewhat self-effacing. With his strong technical ability he was needed to work in the labs and consequently had a better life than many in the Services. Working with ICL’s retraining programme exploited his love of new ideas – and this role of agent of change was something he clearly relished. This openness to new things was fundamental to him and he loved to immerse himself in politics, history, economics, technology, science, and the issues of the day.

David was a quiet yet confident man. I remember his retirement celebration when the Director spoke and the employee spoke. Any stranger watching would have made the wrong assumptions about the one giving the hesitant performance from notes and the other delivering an easy, engaging speech off the cuff. The quiet, confident man was the employee, David.

David took to personal computers from the early days, and acquired a BBC Micro. He revelled in the huge strides being made in technology and kept up with it all his life. He went to IT classes in retirement to learn more about WP, spreadsheets and databases and put all this knowledge to good use for the RAF Apprentices Association, which he did much to get established. His work for them as Treasurer, on the commemorative window and on the magazine is an example of David’s commitment and his abilities, technical and aesthetic, which will be hard to follow. David was very loyal to his employers, his work, his colleagues and friends and not least, his family. In retirement he became the technical support for family and friends, all of whom are now struggling without him.

David loved golf and like anything else that interested him he studied it. Not that it did him much good. For all his study of body positions, psychology and retooling, he suffered the same frustrations as the rest of us. That is, one perfect shot was followed by complete opposite. But he enjoyed the scenery, the fresh air, exercise and the spasmodic success.

David was enjoying his retirement – he would spend an hour at breakfast reading the newspaper and draining the coffee pot. He liked to share in the occasional glass of wine and was keen to introduce friends to his many interests. Of course it meant we had to put up with his love of puns which, to be fair, made us laugh more often than groan. He was an energetic person both physically and mentally. This meant he could only spare 4 hours a night in sleep. He has probably had more time awake in his life than most people at 90. In this extra time he would read and enjoy both novels and non-fiction, and watch late night documentaries or films.

He was a cultured man and loved music and art, particularly English Watercolours. He much enjoyed the masters of classical music, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and he explored with great pleasure 20th Century composers.

He tried to look after himself, particularly as he had problems with his back and used to swim at length. I mean at length. Not long ago, when he was 62, he completed 400 miles in the pool in just one year. That means swimming on average in a week, over 500 lengths of the pool. David even went swimming after his colostomy - no mean feat! This care meant that he worked for 43 years with hardly a day off sick, so it seemed unfair that liver cancer should take him so soon after he qualified for his old age pension Through his illness, his mantra became “I take one day at a time and I try to make the most of it” There is much to said for it.

Many of us have lost a good, loyal friend

Dick Goodwin - August 2004