Smith Kenneth Charles

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Biografie:
KENNETH CHARLES SMITH
1907- 1961
Kenneth Smith died from a heart attack on the ski slopes at St. Moritz on January 6, 1961, whilst skiing with his youngest daughter on her fifteenth birthday.
He was aged 54. From Harrow he went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he captained the Cambridge University Ski Team.
He was Secretary of the Ski Club of Great Britain from 1939 to 1946, Vice-President from 1951 to 1953 and Honorary Treasurer from 1953 until his death. He was Honorary Secretary of the Alpine Ski Club from 1937 to 1958 and President in 1957- 58. He was elected to the Alpine Club in 1945 on the strength of much good rock climbing in the British Isles and a lot of ski mountaineering, which was his real passion; he was a popular member of the Club, was on the Committee from 1954 to 1957 and did a great deal of most useful work for the A.C. Centenary celebrations.
He organised the first two ski mountaineering parties for the Ski Club of Great Britain at the Berliner Hut before the War and was to have taken a gift from the Ski Club to the guide Franz Steindl to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the courses. He joined the R.A.F.(V.R.) early in the War and attained the rank of Wing Commander on Air Staff Intelligence and became joint head of a section dealing with the German Order of Battle. On demobilisation he joined the printing firm of Truslove & Bray, but resigned from it when it was taken over.
I clj1nbed with him last on Craig-yr-Ysfa in 1940 on a week-end snatched from the War; he was a good and safe rock climber and would have no doubt done a lot more climbing but for the War. He loved mountains and he will be remembered by all those who profited from the ski mountaineering courses which he largely organised and led.
He was a charming and congenial companion with a quiet and ready wit, and his almost diffident manner concealed an ability which became more apparent the longer one knew him.
His early death will be a great loss to the mountaineering and skiing worlds, where his great capacity for organisation would have been of great service for many years.
He is survived by his wife (Nancye Barry) and three daughters, to whom the Club's sympathy is extended.
IRVINE G. AITCHISON.

Sir John Hunt writes:
It was typical of Ken Smith that the outstanding service he gave to Youth through the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme began with a spontaneous offer to help, which he made to me during lunch at the Ski Club in 1957. For two years, while the Scheme was developing as an entirely new venture in youth work and on meagre funds, Ken was a tower of strength in my London office, taking much of the administration on his shoulders.
Later, he asked to help us in the field and became Honorary Award Liaison Officer in his own county of Surrey, where he quickly established happy relationships with the education authorities and the voluntary bodies.
I shall treasure the memory of some days spent with Ken in North Wales last summer, when he was supervising a course for leaders studying the Expedition Section of the Scheme at the C.C.P .R. Mountain Centre in North Wales. It was typical of his thoughtfulness that a colour photograph which he took of my daughter and myself during this course, while we were training for an expedition to Northeast Greenland, should have reached me after his death.
Ken Smith will be remembered with deep affection, not only by many skiers, but by numerous friends in Youth Service.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 66, 1961, Seite 188-190


Geboren am:
1907
Gestorben am:
06.01.1961