When my father, Colin Smith, who has died aged 89, was a small boy during the second world war, he observed that when someone was ill, there was a general sense of relief when the doctor arrived. He wanted to be the person whose presence was so reassuring, and set about making it happen.
He was born in Godalming, Surrey. His father, Sydney Smith, went from the Royal Flying Corps to running a preparatory school with his wife, Constance (nee Sidney) – giving Colin the advantage of a scholarly background.
After Charterhouse school in the town and then Oxford University, where he studied medicine, he took a year off from his training at Guy’s hospital in London, and signed up to sail across the North Atlantic on board a Bristol Channel pilot cutter, which is how he met his future wife, Celia Perkins, another crew member.
Realising after qualifying that he could fulfil his national service using his medical skills, Colin went to practise medicine in Lesotho. He wrote to Celia inviting her to join him, and there they were married in 1960.
After three years they returned to settle near the Medway Towns in Kent, living outside the village of Higham, not far from Charles Dickens’s home at Gad’s Hill Place. There he became deeply involved with the local people; both through his work as family doctor and GP trainer, and in the protection of the countryside.
He was one of those who founded the Dickens Country Protection Society in the early 1970s to safeguard the North Kent marshes from the incursion of industry – specifically an oil refinery. Methods included driving around on his 125cc motorbike selling raffle tickets, and making a BBC Open Door documentary, The Forgotten Marshes (1976), to publicise the cause. Colin also held a mud-smeared shrimp-counting “festival” to aid his ecological research. The marshes remain protected to this day.
Colin and Celia retired in 1996 to Dorset where he became occupied with the local church in Beaminster as church warden, while also singing in the choir. The solar panels he had been campaigning for are due to be installed soon in the church roof.
Colin was a voracious reader and a talented amateur musician, artist and writer; fascinated by all aspects of the world. This curiosity led him to constantly experiment with creative techniques, his extraordinary brain being both scientific and artistic. He was well informed about world events; and in parallel with his Christian beliefs he was a staunch supporter of other faiths. He and Celia even travelled to Ramallah in 2004 as part of a local delegation, and visited the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his compound.
His once robust health had deteriorated in recent years and eventually gave out when he suffered heart failure and a stroke. He is widely remembered for his generosity of spirit and enormous sense of fun, which endured almost to the end.
As well as Celia, he is survived by three daughters, Philippa, Diana and me; and three grandchildren, Eve, Joe and Isabella. He was predeceased by his son, Peter.
