Ron Gibson (1962)

Ron’s education began at The Grange School, Hartford. Aged 8 he went to Terra Nova, Holmes Chapel, from where he won a Wall Marston scholarship to Clifton College in January 1957. He left Clifton in December 1961 having been secretary of rugby and achieved 10 ‘O’ level passes including Russian, 3 ‘A’ level passes, and a place at Queens’ for October 1962, to read for the Natural Sciences Tripos.

He spent 3 months of 1962 in Paris at the French equivalent of I.C.I. During this time, he applied to Vickers for an Industrial Scholarship and was awarded one of the 4 available, which covered the cost of his education and accommodation at Queens’. He played for the famous Rugby XV that won the league, rowed in the College’s 5^th boat, was a member of the Kangaroo Club, and graduated with a Class 2.2 degree specialising in Metallurgy.

He began work in October 1965 as a Research Engineer with Vickers-Armstrong in Newcastle. In 1968 he was moved to WH Howson Ltd. In Leeds, a small company, owned by Vickers, making aluminium lithographic printing plates. In September 1970 he started a one-year business course at the Bradford Management Centre and came second in his year. In October 1971 he returned to Vickers as part of a group planning the integration of Algraphy, Howsons major competitor, with Howsons, resulting in Howson-Algraphy. He became Technical Manager of the R & D department, and in 1974, Assistant to the Chief Executive. He married in 1974.

In 1975 Ron went to South Africa to investigate the setting up of a factory there for a local manufacturer of aluminium printing plates. A site was chosen at Pietermaritzburg, and Ron, as Managing Director of Howson-Algraphy South Africa, commissioned the design, oversaw the construction and production began in 1978.

He returned to Leeds in 1984, leaving a profitable company. In 1985 he was seconded to manage Howson-Algraphy in Sweden. Later that year he came back to York as Managing Director of Vickers Instruments.

In 1990 Howson-Algraphy was bought by DuPont: sadly the sale was the wrong company as cultures were so different and for the first time Ron stopped enjoying going to work.  

By 1994 he was 50, legally entitled to draw his company pension, and DuPont were offering favourable terms for redundancy – which he gladly accepted.

He decided he would like to repay some of his debt to society and worked for a charitable company in south Leeds before becoming Business Advisor for Business Link in Doncaster – a government-funded scheme to assist small and medium-sized businesses.

He left in 1999 to become a full-time retiree.

He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2023 and died in February 2024.