Noel Richard Elwis OBE

After a long illness, Dick Elwis died peacefully on the 24 March 2001 aged 78 years. He was born and educated in Nottingham. He joined the West York's Regiment and was commissioned into the Reconnaissance Corps and was involved in the Normandy landing.

He subsequently read dentistry at Queens University Belfast and then spent 25 years in general dental practice in Bangor, Northern Ireland. Although he ran a very busy and successful practice he found time to undertake some undergraduate teaching at Royal Victoria hospital and also interested himself in the dento-political affairs of the province, eventually chairing the Northern Ireland GDSC and the Northern Ireland Dental Estimates Committee.

Dick was appointed chairman of the Dental Estimates Board for England and Wales in January 1977, where he served for nine years before retiring. Throughout his term at Eastbourne he led the Board with quiet dignity and guided it astutely through an increasingly complex and difficult time in its evolution. It was very fitting that, after a career of service to the profession, Dick was honoured by the award of the Order of the British Empire.

In 1944 he married Mary and was blessed with two daughters Janet and Rosamund to be followed by four grandsons and a granddaughter, he had a wide range of interests including sailing, golf and music where he possessed a good singing voice.

He will be sadly missed by friends and family alike.

C. D. P.

David Dury Hindley-Smith

David Hindley-Smith died in April aged 85 years. He was successively Registrar of the Dental Board of the UK and of the GDC from 1946 until his retirement in 1981.

He came to the dental profession after distinguished war service in the Army where he held several important military and diplomatic appointments. Offered the opportunity to return to the Diplomatic Service or join the Conservative Central Office he answered an advertisement and was appointed Registrar of the Dental Board.

In 1946, he masterminded the reconstitution of the Dental Board and the Dentists Register. In 1956 and 1957 he was occupied with the drafting of the Dentists Acts of those years and with the setting up of the GDC. He was the linchpin of the planning of the Council's new premises in Wimpole Street.

He was instrumental in looking ahead to the possible effect on the dental profession of the UK's entry into the EEC and became recognised as an authority on matters European. From 1972 he was an observer on the EEC Dental Liaison Committee when he became involved in the making of the Dental Directives and their subsequent implementation. He was a true European and respected as such by our continental colleagues.

When he retired in 1981 Sir Frank Lawton, President of the GDC said of him '1 can think of no other layman who has contributed in the same generous measure to the good name and reputation of the dental profession, and the profession owes him an incalculable debt'.

He was made CBE, Honorary FDSRCS(Eng) and FDSRCS(Edin) and an Honorary Member of the BDA.

David was an administrator 'par excellence' who left his mark on the GDC, the wider profession and on The National Association of Youth Clubs whose Executive Chairman he was from 1970 to 1974. He was a man of sharp intellect with excellent expertise in written English; indeed the Council's papers were always succinct and well researched. For all his outward success and achievement he was a man of modesty and understatement.

He was faithfully supported, particularly in the Council's domestic and gastronomic arrangements, by his wife Dorothy, who sadly lived to share only a few of his retirement years. He leaves two step-daughters and step grandchildren and great grandchildren of whom he was enormously proud.

Apart from visits to David and his beautiful garden, my personal lasting memory of this gentle man was a flight to Milan in 1981. On arrival David – a very unconvincing terrorist – was led away to the local police station to reclaim an offensive weapon, which had been confiscated at Heathrow. It was his pruning knife which, as he explained, '....one always carries, dear boy, to get through the cellophane and reach the cheese in those dreadful airline meals'.

P. R. W.