Note of Condolence: Terry White (1933-2024)
By Rob Dunn
Apologies for rather belatedly reporting this sad news to the wider Surbiton Hockey Club community.
Surbiton has lost another stalwart.
Terry’s family wrote that it was with very mixed emotions and a heavy heart that they shared the news of Terry’s passing on Christmas Eve 2024 at Les Bourgs Hospice, Guernsey, aged 91 years. He lived a long and fulfilling life, filled with love, humour, and unforgettable memories. His final chapter was fortunately very comfortable and very brief. Adored husband of the late Hilda (a regular SHC Tea Lady), wonderful father of Paul, Juliet and Matthew (a past SHC team captain) and much-loved grandfather of James, Oliver, Oscar and Lucas. A Service of Celebration for Terry's life, prior to cremation was held at Le Foulon Chapel on Monday 13 January 2025.
Terry was co-founder of White Young and Partners, a large and extremely successful firm of Consulting Civil Engineers whose stock in trade was designing impressive state buildings in the Middle East. When I joined Surbiton as a 17-year-old, Terry drove a Ferrari Dino to matches. This was one of the reasons I became a civil engineer. I didn't find out till I worked for him during one of my university holidays that he was actually at the very top of the profession! His staff had nothing but praise for TC as he was affectionately known.
When he retired, Terry quickly got bored, and it wasn’t long before he was using his sharp mind working for post glasnost Russians three days a week organising the logistics for their newly independent oil industry. At least that was his story! After a triple heart bypass, Hilda persuaded Terry to slow down. He started writing a novel and created Marcus Moon, an irrepressible civil engineer who manages to get himself in all kinds of japes and scrapes. Needless to say, not only did Terry enjoy the process, but he was extremely good at it. This led to another six books, three of which starred Marcus Moon.
A capable, but not outstanding player, Terry joined Surbiton from Doncaster in the 1960s. He remained a player until his early 60s and a keen supporter for the rest of his life. An atypical Yorkshireman, Terry had a terrific sense of humour. His match reports in the club’s weekly bulletin (usually penned on flights to the gulf) were always a season’s highlight, but probably sufficiently non-PC to be frowned upon by today’s audiences. A couple of memorable incidents involving Terry spring to mind. The first: on arriving unchanged at an away match at a girl’s boarding school, Terry had to change beside his Ferrari. This resulted in girls hanging out of dormitory windows much to all our amusement. The second: Paddy Tripp ushered in a sheikh in full dishdasha with ghutra to the Strollers Worthing Easter Festival dinner. The sheikh proceeded to say grace in Arabic. A perplexed Strollers touring party only realised it was actually Terry in blackface and with a false moustache when he ended with “the stinking khazi of Bagdad”!
Terry was one of a couple of major benefactors to Surbiton Hockey Club. Ever the modest man, he never wanted this fact to be widely known, but it was an open secret to those of us who were close to him. It’s fair to say that his extraordinary generosity, and unflinching support to the then Club Captain Geoff Dunn was pivotal in enabling Surbiton to install our first artificial grass pitch, thus starting the transformation that would take the club from the lower levels of the London League to the pinnacle of the National League. As if that wasn’t enough, Terry’s firm oversaw the design and construction of the current clubhouse. Only a select few knew how many of the club’s other developments were funded at least in part by Terry’s continuing generosity.
A great guy and an outstanding supporter of SHC. We will be forever in his debt.
By Rob Dunn