Husband and father Mike Scott was enjoying early retirement in Gloucestershire after a successful business career when he was diagnosed with a glioblastoma. He underwent surgery and died nine months later in the most tragic of circumstances during a BBQ with his close family. His widow Mary made a significant donation to Brain Tumour Research which enabled the launch of the fourth Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in Sutton, Surrey.
Here his wife Mary shares his story ….
I laugh when I look back and remember how Mike and I met. It was in the most unlikely of circumstances but, as soon as I saw him, I knew I was going to marry him. I was on a bus with some friends in Wolverhampton when he got on. He was very handsome, sculpted, with blonde hair and wearing Levi’s and a leather jacket.
He looked at me and smiled. Coincidentally we were all going to the same discotheque but it was a little while before we got together. I was so young, 18, but I just knew he was the man for me. At the time I was a pharmacy technician with Boots and Mike was an apprentice at an engineering company in Wolverhampton and studying at night college.
My parents loved him, everyone did, and being with him was wonderful. We had no money and when Mike passed his driving test, we borrowed from my father to buy a Triumph Herald we called Henry and paid the loan back every Friday at £3 a week.
He proposed after a couple of friends of ours got engaged. He wanted to buy me a ring but money was so tight he got another job as a barman at night and saved for weeks to buy me a diamond ring which he gave me on bended knee.
We got married in July 1973. Mike was very intelligent. I always said he could have gone to Oxford or Cambridge but that hadn’t happened so I encouraged him to go to university, in fact I wrote a letter to the head of electrical engineering at Aston University and Mike was invited for interview – we went together on the bus – and he was offered a place.
We managed to scrape enough money together to buy a dilapidated terraced house in the Wednesbury. Our family chipped in on the renovation project and together, with some help and guidance, we did it up with Mike turning his hand to everything, plastering, plumbing, electrics.
I was still working in pharmacies across the West Midlands and, as Mike was doing his finals, we found out I was pregnant. Going to university gave Mike enormous confidence and he graduated with a first, of course he did! The circumstances meant he needed to find a job pretty fast and he was taken on by Avery as a design engineer.
We moved house to a nicer area in Walsall and did a lot of work to create our family home where we brought up our son Ben. Mike rose up the corporate ladder, he was designing weighing scales and electronics, and travelled a lot.
Things were quite settled and I decided I needed a new challenge so I gave up my job and studied English Literature at the University of Wolverhampton and then did my PGCE in order to start a new career as a teacher.
I taught in A level colleges around the West Midlands. I loved it and felt I had found my calling. But change was coming as Mike was headhunted for a job as technical director for Strix, the global leader in the design and supply of kettle safety controls, in the Isle of Man. I didn’t really want to go but he was being offered a fantastic package and we just couldn’t say no.
So off we went, we ended up staying for 25 years and, despite my initial reluctance, it was wonderful and we had a great life there. I was very fortunate to get a job at what is now University College Isle of Man, initially covering maternity leave but then in a permanent role. They were happy days. Mike was busy travelling mainly to China and he made a lot of money as the company was sold twice and he had shares. I loved my job and felt I was making a real difference to young lives; it was exhausting but great. We had a very comfortable, happy family life.
We had lovely family holidays together. Although Mike was away a lot for work, we also travelled together, he always loved driving and was a great planner. He was always calm and I felt safe when I was with him.
It was while we were away on a road trip in America that warning bells started to ring. On one occasion on he was driving us back to the airport when he became confused about which exit to take and struggled to tell his left from his right hand. It was so out of character. Then, when we got home, I noticed he was having trouble making sense of a complicated spreadsheet he was using to plan a big car festival; he just didn’t seem to know what he was doing.
