Alan Millar
Born December 16 ,1935; Died November 22, 2011
Alan Millar, who has died suddenly aged 75, was an Army educator whose abiding passion was for the south-west coast of Scotland.
He was born in Helensburgh, but his roots were in Tighnabruaich, of which he was a true son. He was the last of the Millars to have lived at Tighnabruaich House, an outstanding feature of the Argyll landscape when viewed from the Kyles of Bute.
His family built their fortune through Millar's tannery, which flourished in Glasgow's Duke Street, and, at a young age, he was admitted into The Incorporation of Cordiners in Glasgow and became a Freeman of the city.
He attended Larchfield preparatory school for boys in Helensburgh, followed by Strathallan School in Perthshire, where he became head boy and won colours for rugby. Although happy and successful at school his fondest memories were of cruising the west coast during holidays on his family's motor cruisers.
On leaving school he went to Queen's University, Belfast, to read history where, due to his strong interest in archaeology, he was known as Morti after Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the famous archaeologist.
He always had a mischievous sense of humour and this came to the fore at university, most notably when he was involved in a prank where a visiting and heavily bearded Russian academic lecturing on the finer points of Marxism was exposed mid-delivery as a student imposter. He was nearly sent down for this but charmed his way out of trouble.
On graduating he joined the Army, initially for National Service but he stayed on for a full career in officer's education with the Royal Army Education Corps (RAEC) during which he was responsible for the education of young officers, and for presenting them for the Staff College, Camberley exams.
He was highly regarded by his students, many of whom went on to great heights while recalling his refreshing and informal style of instruction and his unstinting support.
During his career he continued his studies at Edinburgh University in adult education and at Cambridge and King's College London, where he was awarded an MA in war studies.
He served in the Outer Hebrides, Germany, Cyprus (where he covered Oman), Edinburgh, Wiltshire and Northern Ireland, where he was involved in vetting members of the Ulster Defence Regiment on its formation to screen out extremists. Latterly, he worked for the Open University and retained his interest in teaching and lecturing while further expanding his own academic interests.
The mainstay of his life thoughout was his wife Mary, whom he met on New Year's Eve in 1960 in Northern Ireland. He accidently spilled a glass of champagne on her as an opening gambit. It worked well and in more than 30 years of service and 50 years of marriage he and Mary were devoted to each other, moving 15 times and always building a warm, comfortable and welcoming home wherever they went.
He embraced practical hobbies with wonderful impracticality – luckily his wife Mary was not far behind to pick up the pieces. He caught the green bug early on, inflicting his family with a diet of home-grown vegetables with caterpillar, or home-grown caterpillar with vegetables, depending on how successful his harvest had been, all occasionally accompanied by his potent home brew and homemade wine.
This hobby came to full fruition in the dying days of his Army career and the early days of his retirement in Wiltshire, where he built a small but very successful market garden with hens and vegetables.
But he was happiest on the south- west coast of Scotland, both for idyllic hours sailing in his boat Ciamara and for the rich heritage of paddle steamers ploughing the Clyde. He returned to his native district of Tighnabruaich and Kames in 1992 and quickly became a bastion of the community and a very able and diligent member of the community council.
He was a prime force in the formation of a Probus Club of which he became secretary and then chairman, providing a meeting point for older men and a further resource in the area. In addition to collecting, editing and publishing a set of reminiscences by various contributors on older times in the district, he wrote a scholarly and highly-readable history of the area .
But perhaps the accomplishment which gave him the greatest personal satisfaction was his leading part in the initiative to save the pier which was built by his great- grandfather, and of which he also wrote a history. He lived to see the fulfilment of his dream and every summer he delighted in the Waverley's arrivals at the pier to embark and disembark passengers. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of paddle steamers on the Clyde and was sought after as a lecturer and an expert in this field.
He is interred in a family plot on a hillside above Tighnabruaich, overlooking his beloved Kyle. He leaves close family ties of his widow Mary, two sons Colin and Robin (who followed him into the Army) a daughter, Anna and two grandchildren, Hugo and Joshua.
Published on 6 December 2011
Colin Millar
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