UK demolition industry mourns the loss of one of its key characters.
The National Federation of Demolition Contractors has announced the passing of one of its former presidents, David Ross Turner, who has died peacefully at home after a long illness.
Ross Turner was the only man to have held the president’s role at the NFDC, Institute of Demolition Engineers and the Asbestos Removal Contractors Association, a fact that was honoured during the recent NFDC Convention in Portugal where his protege David Darsey handed him a well-deserved “Hat-Trick Hero” award.
It was, perhaps, fitting that his final public appearance was at a function held by the Federation to which he had devoted much of his working life.
My own personal memory of Ross (and I never did get to ask him why some people called him David, others Ross) is something of a mixed bag. Ross (to me, he was always Ross) was NFDC President when I applied – unsuccessfully, as it transpired – for the job of editor of the NFDC’s magazine, Demolition & Dismantling back in 2001. Then, just a few years later, when he was at the helm of the IDE, he was instrumental in me being named editor of the IDE’s Demolition Engineer magazine.
I asked him once why I’d been good enough on one occasion but, apparently, not good enough on another. He said, simply: “I was just doing what I thought was best for the Federation and the Institute at the time.”
Funny thing is, he was right both times. I will miss him enormously.
