DAVID LOCKWOOD, Museums manager, Dumfries and Galloway Council Curator of Dumfries Burgh Museum Born February 14, 1919 Died February 25, 2007

Alf Truckell, curator of Dumfries Burgh Museum from 1948 to 1982, was one of those lucky people in life whose job was also his passion. For 35 years his mission was to educate and inform about the history of Dumfries and Galloway - a task he undertook with considerable enthusiasm.

His father, Henry, had relocated from Dumfries in 1917 to Barrow in Furness for war work with Vickers Armstrong and Alf was born there in 1919. The family returned in the early 1920s and the young Alf went to Noblehill School and later Dumfries Academy.

After working in Dinwiddie's booksellers, in 1937 he became a clerk in the Town Clerk's office but was saved from a life of tedium by the outbreak of the Second World War. Serving in the pay corps in Baghdad and later in scrap salvage in the pioneer corps in Alexandria, he always said that it was lucky that someone high up assessed his talents early on, and told me: "Lad, someone quickly realised that if I had been given a gun, I would have been more use to the Germans!"

It was in Alexandria that he met his wife, Marguerite, a Jewish French Egyptian.

Returning home after the war, after a spell indexing town council minutes, he was seconded to the museum becoming curator in 1948.

Of small stature, accentuated by a stoop and coping with a profound stammer he had from childhood, Alf was an unlikely champion for the area's heritage but all those who met him could not fail to be impressed by the vast wealth of his knowledge.

Over the years he extended the museum's collection and conducted numerous archaeological excavations. He had extensive knowledge of the town's archives, some of the most complete in Scotland, and was a master of reading early handwriting. He was published widely and the Transactions of the Dumfries and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society bear testament to his considerable researches.

His contribution to the study of the region's history was significant, with more than 90 reviews and papers published in the Antiquarian Society transactions alone.

He was a past president of the society and a member since 1947.

His skills in palaeography were considerable and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the town's archives ensured their survival and their widespread recognition as some of the most important in Scotland. He always encouraged others to bring their skills to bear on the region's history.

He virtually single-handedly ran the burgh museum and archives for many years. He gave of his time freely in the evenings, too, as a stalwart of the Glasgow University extra mural department and the Women's Rural/Local Society speaking circuit, travelling round the countryside in his Austin 1100.

In 1962 his scholarship was rewarded when he received an honorary MA from Edinburgh University, at the time only the 12th to be awarded. He had time for everyone, young or old, and he later received an MBE for his educational work.

With ships' captains on both sides of his family, Alf lived for many years at Carsethorn on the Solway Firth.

I came to Dumfries Burgh Museum as his assistant almost 30 years ago, but this was not the first time I had met him. I can vividly remember being in the museum as a boy. The place was in turmoil, still recovering from the removal of the main hall roof and the installation of new showcasing. There were objects everywhere - you could hardly walk on the floor. But still he found time to talk to me, just a schoolboy, and for well over an hour.