Michael Roberts (15 Jun 1937 - 2 Feb 2021)

In loving memory of Michael Roberts who sadly passed away on 2nd February 2021.

Michael Roberts had many names. Michael always to his wife Sylvia. Dad or Pop to Lynne and Neil. Bubba to Sian, Pop Pops to Eron and Flinn. Mich to his family in Birmingham and Melton Mowbray. Mike to his friends and colleagues.

He was also a lucky man. Lucky to be brought up in the love of his grandparents, mum and Aunts, with his big sister Barbara. He said he was probably a bit spoiled as the only boy. Lucky to go to a grammar school that encouraged his academic and sporting achievements, giving him a passion for football, rugby, cricket and sport in general that lasted the rest of his life. Lucky to meet the love of his life in his teens, he and mum got engaged on her 19th birthday and married at 21.Lucky to have failed a German exam while training to be a PE teacher, which meant a career change to Custom and Excise and the chance to get in to computing in its very early days.

This meant a move from Birmingham to Southend in 1965, with Sylvia and the kids following on in 1966. A few years at Ford European HQ, meant the move to a new house in Benfleet in 1972. Shortly after he joined JCCC ( Access ) in Southend and was part of the credit card evolution in this country. He really enjoyed his time on the Mastercard European and Worldwide committees and relished the travel that came with it. He headed up Cardlink Ltd at the end of his career and during the train journeys to Gt. Portland St. found that he had a talent for limericks, then poetry and writing in general, it became a passion when he retired.

Dad loved sport, you could say he was a bit of a fanatic, he was talented too! he played rugby and cricket, reveling in playing cricket with Neil and achieving has ambition of scoring a century. He played table tennis and partnered Ann Jones (of Wimbledon fame) when representing Birmingham. He took up squash and played on Saturday morning with Lynne and Neil. When Lynne developed an interest in Gymnastics, he helped found a new gymnastics club. But his biggest love became golf, religiously playing twice a week with a group that became the 89ers at Three Rivers, enjoying not only the golf but the banter and camaraderie that came with it.
He joined many poetry and writing groups, Seven Pens, Tea Time Poets, Southend Poetry, Dangerous Poetry and Leigh Writers. He loved doing open mics and many of his idea were literally written on the back of an envelope, or any bit of paper that came to hand when the muse took him. He was proud to have been published on both local and national newspapers
He loved to travel and went to Kenya, the Philippines and Belgium with Lynne and David, plus visited Canada to visit Neil and Sue.

He dealt with the diagnosis of prostate and bladder cancer with determination to beat both. One of his proudest writing achievements was writing a self published poetry book to raise money for the Southend Hospital charity to buy equipment for the urology department, he raised over £2000.

Since 2015 he lived at Savannah Heights in Leigh on Sea, from where he was able to continue all his pastimes and passions.
The last two years have been hard for all of us as his health failed and mixed dementia was diagnosed in January 2020. Sadly this progressed faster then any of us could have predicted and in June 2020 he went to to live in Milton House care home, where he was so very well looked after.
He will be remembered as someone who would help and support if he could. He was always sociable, ready to chat to anyone, with a gentle sense of humour and ready wit. We are grateful that this was with him almost to then end.
We could not have had a better dad, we will always love him and miss him.