My father, Erik Fudge, a professor of linguistics and non-stipendiary priest, has died on the age of 86, having examined constructive for Covid-19.
Following a PhD in linguistics at Cambridge College, a Fulbright scholarship took Erik to Indiana College within the US from 1963 to 1965, after which he was appointed lecturer in linguistics on the College of Edinburgh. In 1968 he took up a college lectureship in linguistics (phonetics) at Cambridge, and the household moved to Bar Hill on the outskirts of the town. When Dad grew to become chair on the College of Hull in 1974, we moved to Hessle. He remained at Hull as head of the division of linguistics till 1988, earlier than shifting to the College of Studying as professor of linguistic science. Dad was the editor of the Journal of Linguistics (1977-82), and writer of quite a few papers and of the e book English Phrase-Stress (1984). He retired from academia in 1999.
Born in Southampton to Herbert and Hilda (nee Lille), each schoolteachers, Dad attended Itchen grammar college. He was admitted to Cambridge College to learn maths in 1952, however transferred to trendy and medieval languages, graduating in 1955.
Having been demobbed in 1957, he took a PGCE at Southampton College and spent the subsequent 4 years in that metropolis instructing at St Denys junior college after which Moorhill secondary college. Whereas out carol singing in Southampton on Christmas Eve 1957, he met Heather Hunter. They married two years later.
Dad grew to become a lay reader within the Church of England in 1960, and fulfilled a long-held want when he was ordained as a non-stipendiary priest in 1994. He continued to serve at St Sebastian’s church in Wokingham With out, Berkshire, the place we moved to in 1988, till the week earlier than his demise.
An skilled builder of intricate drainage networks on quite a few sandy seashores whereas on vacation in Wales within the Nineteen Seventies, Dad continued to dig on those self same seashores in his function as grandpa. He had the loudest clap within the universe, which he loved displaying at our annual pilgrimage to the Oval for day two of the Check match (it’s by joyful probability that on our final journey we noticed Australia bowled out in lower than a day). He was unfortunate sufficient to all the time be dealt the worst hand potential in each card sport he ever performed; might write you instructions off the highest of his head from Wokingham to wherever within the UK utilizing solely A and B roads; knew the age of each historical bus he ever noticed; might (and did) learn The Goon Present scripts with all of the voices; and whistled on a regular basis, which meant you knew when he had stopped on the street to learn a bus-stop timetable because the noise grew to become faint.
He’s survived by Heather, his youngsters, Tim, Tessa and me, and his three grandsons, Osian, Oran and Macsen.