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2 Jan 2025 | |
Obituaries |
Mervyn John Selby Mitchell
OP 1960
15 August 1942 - 7 October 2024
With thanks to Mervyn's brother, Paul
Mervyn, being a war baby, was immediately evacuated to Wales with his Mother, Sylvia, whilst his father, Laurie, remained designing planes (including parts of the Horsa Glider) with Airspeed on Portsmouth aerodrome. Wales was so dull that they quickly returned to Portsmouth in time for the continuing Blitz on the City. Despite the best efforts of the Luftwaffe, Mervyn survived and joined PGS. He enjoyed his time in the CCF and went to Sandhurst upon leaving the School. That choice lasted longer than the Wales jaunt, but only just, as he left the Army after a few months and then started to qualify as a Civil Engineer. His career involved a lot of muck and water. He was the agent or Construction Engineer on many diverse projects, reservoirs, a lot of water treatment (sewage) works, bridges (over water), bridges (over railways), quays and docks (Saudi Arabia). I can just imagine that his former Masters would say that they were unsurprised at him ending up in working so often in sewage.
He wrote two e-books about his construction life which are available on Amazon. The first one is titled “And Now I is One: An Engineer's Tale”, which shows a lack of grasp of basic English sentence structures. He did fit in though very well in Cornwall where he spent his last twenty-five years. There, he had a house with stunning views across Fistral Beach, near Newquay, which is one of the top surfing places in the UK. Mervyn never surfed but painted many scenes of Cornwall. His style could best be described as primitive. He didn’t sell many art works but our relatives happily all have quite a collection.
He was active in the Community and successfully obtained “Village Green” Status for the headland area situated outside his house. Nothing can now be built on that area to ruin the views and its use as an amenity. A significant amount of his time was spent with local residents and the Town and County Councils maintaining and improving the whole Pentire area of Newquay.
Mervyn was buried in Newquay, Cornwall, on 21st October 2024. He had prostate cancer. It would be nice if someone, as a result of reading this, had an early test for prostate cancer as it is not a pleasant way to go.
Mervyn is survived by his wife Rachel, and his younger siblings Wendy and Paul. He married in 1973, and had three children, Martin, Mark and Ruth. At the time that he met his wife-to-be he was working on the main road bridge that crosses the River Exe into Exeter. That is still standing and operational like many of his other engineering projects. It is nice to know that something tangible, and in this case concrete, remains after he has gone.