Trevor Gilby

2009-09-19

 

A loving husband and father to a very loving and caring family.

The news, that the Gilby family were to hold a Memorial for Trevor on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009 at his daughter, Heather Kerrigan’s home, came as a shock, although I had news in April 2009, that Trevor was having some dialysis complications and was awaiting hospital appointments and possible surgery.

My friendship with Trevor goes back to when we were about 11 years old as my family went to Bombay from Jhansi to see my maternal grandparents, the Richardsons, off to England. As we stayed with Mr. Hornby in a railway bungalow right opposite the tennis courts of the Matunga Railway Institute/Club, I spotted a boy of my own age walking about, so I went across and joined him and he showed me how to climb up the steel pipes used as a frame for the canvas curtain around the tennis courts, that were also used for open air dances during Christmas and Easter.

I was happy to have Trevor as a classmate and friend for the last three years of high school at St. Mary’s Mt. Abu, 1954-56, and to visit him on my bicycle from my house 123 Sion East, Bombay, while he was staying at 1 Pushpa Kunj, National College Road, Bandra. I had the pleasure of a train trip up the Western Ghats with Trevor and his family, climbing up onto large oil holding tanks at the Oil Blending Plant yard and trying out battery operated oil drum carts at the Burma Shell Oil Blending Plant where Trevor’s father was the Manager. Trevor & I also joined a weight lifting and body building club in Mahim, Bombay as we were at the stage when we were quite skinny and wanted to develop a noticeable body with rippling muscles. I remember Trevor as a very pleasant fellow, a very good student who was picked by Br. R.D. Barrett to give the speech and thanks to our class master Br. A.G. Bennett after the last special dinner at school for the passing out class of 1956.

After high school, Trevor went on to Poona to do his Higher Cambridge School Certificate in 1957 while I went to St. Xavier’s College, Bombay. I lost touch with Trevor in 1959 when I joined my father in Ludhiana, Punjab to train in the manufacture, testing and sales of metal cutting workshop machinery, and Trevor left soon after for Southall, Middlesex, England.

After some forty-six years I received an email dated January 8, 2007 informing me that the author of the email was Trevor Gilby’s wife (Cheryl) and that through a very convoluted set of circumstances she happened upon my website about my school days with Trevor in Mt. Abu, while talking to Val Noronha, an old Bombay neighbour and family friend of the Gilby family.

It has been a privilege to be in touch with Cheryl on and off for the last almost three years, and I am happy that I was able to give Cheryl, Jen, Heather and Erin a background account of Trevor’s last year of high school in a hill station, run by the Irish Christian Brothers in India, along with photographs of the class on jungle walks and school functions and games.

Trevor, we will remember you and pray that God grant you peace everlasting.

Your friend and classmate.

Chris Joseph (1956)