RIP - David T Smith (DON, 50-57)

David Treharne Smith: Donaldsons, 1950 - 1957

Born 16th July 1938 - Died 6th October 2024

We have all gathered here to say goodbye to David Smith, sometimes known as DT or DTS as well as Daddy and Grandpa.  Although we mourn his passing, we will also give thanks for all he gave to us in love and friendship in his eighty-six years of life.

Today we think first of those who were closest to David.  Lives which have been tied so closely together cannot be separated without pain, so our thoughts in particular are with his wife Silvia, his daughters Sorrell, Tessa and Carys and their spouses Ming, Mark and Duncan, his grandchildren Eve, Guy, Max, Caleb, Grace, Magnus and Margot and his brother Jonathan and his family.   He will be greatly missed by you, his immediate family, as well as by the wider circle of people whose lives and paths he touched.

We are meeting here today, to remember and celebrate the life of a most honourable man. 

Remembering David by brother Jonathan (DON, 52-60)

David was born in 1938 in the city of Gloucester, the first child of a very English mother and a very Welsh father. Both his parents were teachers. In 1942, with David a lively 4-year-old, they left a bombed city to live in rural Gloucestershire, near Berkeley, moving into his grandfather’s family home, with his father now away at the war.

The most formative, indeed transforming, period of David’s early life was to be his time as a boarder at Christ College, Brecon. Here he played the games he loved, cricket and rugby, made some friends who proved to be literally lifelong, and as a very good mimic found rich material on tap in the ageing staff.

He loved Christ College and was later to become a governor of the school, and its unofficial but best historian.

To go back a bit, it is fair to say, that as a little boy David had his moments. He was what is called a bit a handful. At Berkeley primary school, when the teacher at the end of the day, because they had all been good children, was going to read them a story, adding, ‘And if you don’t want to listen you can leave now.’ Which David promptly did, heading for the conker tree. He also liked to give his grandfather the run-around. His favourite trick was locking his grandfather in the summer house or even better in the lavatory. As a last illustration, when the family were all gathered for the long drive to Wales for the summer holiday – the car all packed, the engine running – he climbed the nearest tree and sat at the very top, smiling and waving down at them.

As a young chartered accountant, he revealed his formidable memory, his accuracy, and his capacity for sustained hard work. He was soon widely respected as a man of great integrity. He did not cut corners, he got the facts right, he read the small print and beware anyone who tried to pull the wool over his eyes. He had no time for cheap charm. He was highly principled. He spoke the truth. He had the eye of an eagle.

These were the qualities he brought to bear in his extremely successful career, culminating in 24 years as financial director of Rotork. These were the same qualities that marked his private and loving family life. A very happy marriage to Silvia, his devotion to his three daughters, a devotion they returned, and growing families of their own.

He travelled widely in his business life, including a four-year spell in Kuwait – when he and Silvia were first married – and later in his retirement, following cricket and rugby. He loved Glamorgan cricket, Welsh rugby, and he stayed loyal. He liked nothing more than a day out with friends at Lord’s or Cardiff.

He knew a formidable amount about early cricket, and established one of the great cricket libraries. Anyone who visited the family house in Corsham noticed that David’s character was bound up with his study and his books – including all the little annotations and marginalia where he recorded every typo and factual error that the authors and publishers had missed. As a fact-checker and proof-reader he was over-qualified but unequalled.

David also wrote and published several books about cricket, one of his many quiet achievements. In all things he was modest to a fault, always generous while deflecting praise or credit that might be coming his way. He avoided the limelight but his was often the secret hand within success.

Though disciplined and understated, he was a quietly good judge of life’s pleasures. He loved wine and witty company, and enjoyed the Basque way of life in retirement (where he felt a kindred spirit to Wales).

Honourable, compassionate and a team player, David would always do things to the best of his ability, combining mastery with modesty. His manner gave the impression of a very English gentlemanliness, but of course the Welsh strand made it much more interesting than that.

He was a very special man, very loving, admirably straight-forward in many ways, but with a twinkle of surprise and mischief never far from view.

Our condolences to wife Silvia, his daughters Sorrell, Tessa and Carys and extended family