IN FOND MEMORY

TOM BOYD (d.1983)

Tom Boyd, a long-standing supporter, and one of the 14 surviving honorary life members of The Questors, died recently.

Tom brought to the Theatre a personality, a quality of workmanship, and a determination to succeed in the task he set himself, that was in the best tradition of the early days of the Quest.

The Shaw Room and the Stanislavsky Room were (with the exception of some specialist trades) built by The Questors’ members with their own hands, and for much of the time that building was in progress, it was from Tom that many of the amateur builders received their instructions.

He sought no place in the front row at curtain call and, predictably, the only photograph of him in the theatre’s archives shows him loading a concrete mixer.

In after years he methodically and expertly maintained the buildings as far as he could by himself, and also tended the garden for many years after the present foyer was built, in particular the eye-catching display of geraniums.

He and Lily once looked after some of the cast of a visiting amateur company from Scandanavia. On leaving, one of them told me — with evident sincerity — that she had never met a kinder man. Tom could have no more fitting epitaph,

George Benn (October 1983)