FRANK KINGDON

Notices of deaths, death announcements and messages.
Ronnie Burton
Posts: 125
Joined: Mon May 12, 2008 8:43 pm

FRANK KINGDON

Post by Ronnie Burton » Thu Feb 12, 2015 8:42 pm

Frank Kingdon
Published in the Dorset Echo on 12 February 15
Frank Kingdon passed away on 1st February. Beloved husband of Lilian for 64 years and father of Jonathan. Sincere thanks to staff at Dorset County Hospital. Service at St Aldhelm's, Spa Road, Weymouth at 2pm on 27 February. Private cremation. Family flowers only but donations to Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance through Stockting Funeral Service, 22 Crescent Street, Weymouth DT4 7BX


Below was written by Bob Jones (Keverel Chess) after his last visit to a WECU meeting when he was confirmed as Life VP-ship

Frank Kingdon first appeared on the westcountry chess scene 48 years ago, in 1962, when he became Secretary of the Dorset C.C.A. and their delegate to W.E.C.U. shortly after moving to his present home in Weymouth. This was his first stepping-stone into chess organisation.
By 1969 he had switched to becoming Correspondence Chess Co-ordinator for Dorset and Grading Officer for WECU and the Union Delegate to the BCF.
In 1976 he was elected WECU President, and as soon as he stepped down from that post he was elected President of Dorset, a role he reprised in the late 1980s. In the mid-1980s he took on the post of WECU’s Fixtures Secretary, a job he did until retirement at the 2009 Council meeting, when he was elevated to the status of Life Vice-President.
He was a founding member of the Dorset Congress in 1964, which he recalls as starting at the former club at the Winfrith Atomic Energy Establishment of which he was a member, before settling in Weymouth. He ran this for many years until ill-health forced his retirement in 2008, after which no-one could be found to replace him in the short term – he was literally irreplaceable. The event has now been incorporated into the Bournemouth Bicentenary Congress in October 2010.
Although a naturalised Dorset man, Frank is, in fact, a Devonian. He was born in Plymouth in 1929 before moving to the tiny village of Puddington, between Tiverton and Crediton, and finally to Exeter at the age of 3. There are still family connections in that area as he has a sister in Exmouth. He attended Hele’s School in Exeter before starting his national service in 1947 with REME where he trained on servicing computers, which in those days were as a big as a house.
After being demobbed he became a pioneering atomic scientist, working first at Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment, the main centre for nuclear power research in the UK. It was the site of Europe’s first nuclear reactor in 1946, and once housed as many as five reactors. Later, he transferred to Winfrith, a UK Atomic Energy Authority site, near Dorchester, which opened in 1958 and was used for nuclear reactor research and development until the 1990s.