For Papa, For Always

CJ is doing a sponsored head shave on 6th February 2021, in memory of her Papa, our beloved Jim Izatt.

Thank you for supporting this cause, here is a tiny snapshot of the best man I've ever known:

Jim Izatt was born in 1929 in Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow. He was the youngest of five brothers (Robert, Andrew, Douglas, Arthur and James); his dad (Robert Sr.) was a milkman at the top of Hope Street/ West Nile Street and his mother (Kate) had been a travelling saleswoman for a pharmaceutical company.

Some of Jim's earliest memories were of going up and down the steep hill in the horse and cart, to pick up milk from the market and carry it to the shops. 

When Jim was about four years old, the family moved to Knightswood where Jim's father ran the dairy business from the family home just off Great Western Road. They were among the first in their neighbourhood to run a car, for Robert Sr.'s delivery service.

Jim won a scholarship to Allan Glen's - then a public secondary school - in Cathedral Street. I remember him telling me the story of this chapter of his life this way:

"They asked me to sit a test," he smiled reminiscingly, over plate of gammon and egg, "and then I did so badly, they sent me to a better school. At the end of that year, they gave me another test, and I must have done so badly at that one they decided I'd need another year there," he added, his eyes twinkling.

Winning scholarships to cover his whole secondary education, Jim then went on to be accepted to the Royal College of Science and Technology in George Street (now part of the University of Strathclyde) to study Mechanical Engineering, after which he went on to start a PhD at the University of Glasgow in Nuclear Engineering.

Jim met his future wife (my grandmother), Pat Clemmens, at a local badminton club - a place which holds it's own special reknown in the Izatt family histories, as more than one of the Izatt brothers and several of their close friends met their soulmates there. Pat and Jim married in 1955.

Jim was called up for National Service and, because of his engineering background, was posted to Aldermaston's research facility Berkshire. Jim was not able to finish his PhD because of his National Service, and he and Pat moved to Hampshire to live and work for the next eight years.

Together, they raised a strong and loving family: Alan, who was born in 1957, Elizabeth in 1959, and Margaret in 1961. Their youngest, Kathryn was born in 1964, after the family had moved back to Scotland, to East Kilbride.

In 1963, Jim was appointed as the Deputy Director of the Scottish Universities Research and Reactor Centre in the grounds of the National Engineering Laboratory in EK - a role which a colleague of his from Hampshire had mentioned to him. Jim had enquired what sort of person the SURRC were looking for and his colleague's reply was to the effect of "Oh, a 6'2, Glaswegian-rugby-player with a background in atomic energy and mechanical engineering, I should think."

This Centre was funded by all the Scottish Universities, who sent students to be taught various subjects related to atomic energy.

Jim undertook and supervised research, taught in Universities and operationally managed the Centre. He also acted as an advisor on the various nuclear power establishments in Scotland and occasionally abroad, and was on the Civil Defence Committee for three decades.

Jim was on-call 24/7, 365 days a year, and there are stories of him being called back from holiday to fix the reactor, often to the chargrin of his young family.

During the Cold War, my mother and her siblings remember their father being allocated a place in Scotland's secret bunker - in case of a nuclear attack. However, as none of the rest of the family had a place, Jim said he would never have gone.

During the 1970's the treatment of leukaemia in children was just being developed, and food for the children needed to be sterilised due to the effects of the drugs on their immune system. Jim and his colleagues utilised gamma irradiation to sterilise foods which could not be heat sterlised - such as bread and ice lollies - and often delivered them in person to Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

The family moved to Strathaven in 1965 to the house which my grandmother still lives in today - a home they designed, and which has seen four generations of Izatts grow.

Jim continued to work for SURRC until his retirement in 1994, and after that continued for some years as an advisor on the safety committee for the Rosyth Naval base.

Jim played badminton, swam a great deal and played golf throughout his life and enjoyed being active and outdoors. He and Pat played a huge part in organising local events and the Strathaven Gala Day right up until 2019, bringing their combined creativity, organisational skills and kindness to create memorable occasions in the community.

Papa; Jim; Jimmy; String Jim; the Auld Yin; Papa The Whale; our wee granddad.

Our beautiful man of science, our fettler of sewing machines and nuclear power plants, our storyteller and our whistling impresario, our quietly brilliant and brilliantly funny friend.

I miss you still.

As a wise person pointed out to me recently, though dementia and Alzheimer's Disease might have made us less the centre of your world in the last year, you never stopped being at the heart of ours.

Jim is much missed by his wife, Pat, his four children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren and each one of the many friends and family members who's lives he touched in his extraordinary life.

James Alexander Izatt
16th December 1929 - 13th November 2020