Accountant and president of the Clan MacLeod Society
Born: July 13, 1918;
Died: January 24, 2017
DONALD MacLeod, who has died aged 98, had a distinguished career in accountancy - he was chief accountant for Ferranti in Scotland for many years - but he was also president of the Clan MacLeod Society and travelled the world as the clan's Scottish ambassador.
He had a very unusual upbringing. His mother, Anne MacLeod née Rudd, died two months after he was born from pernicious anaemia. With his father, Dugald, on active service in Flanders, he was taken in by his maternal grandparents to be brought up with them and his extended family on their farms at the southern tip of Patagonia.
His grandfather did not believe his teacher son-in law could afford to bring up Donald and ignored all requests from Dugald to return his son to him. Distances were so great and communication so difficult that Donald’s father lost all hope of ever seeing his son. Donald was brought up believing his father had been killed in the trenches of the First World War. At the age of 10 he was sent back to Scotland, brought up by foster parents and educated at the George Heriot School in Edinburgh.
On leaving school in 1936, he was apprenticed to Johnston Smillie, then based in Forres Street, Edinburgh, to train as a chartered accountant. Called up in July 1939, he was enlisted into the Royal Army Pay Corps, based in Edinburgh, and then, shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, was transferred to Arras to help organise pay for the troops.
Moved again, before Dunkirk, back to England, he continued his army training. He said he would volunteer for all army courses and constantly improved his marksmanship, bomb disposal knowledge, combat training and overall readiness to actively take the fight to the enemy.
The army, however, kept Donald MacLeod in his accountancy role, and though he returned to Edinburgh (still working for the RAPC), he still had never raised a weapon in actual conflict. He later joked that his Army Service was with the First Chairborne Division. It was while in Edinburgh and playing rugby for the army at Murrayfield that he broke a toe - this was his only war injury he later joked. Receiving treatment at Bangour Hospital he met Estelle, whom he later married, in April 1944.
Seconded to the Royal West Africa Frontier Force in Lagos, he continued with the division, first to North Africa and then to India and then on into Burma. Given his South American background, these postings enlivened his continuous interest in travel. Having risen to the rank of captain he was demobbed in 1946.
He returned to his wife in Edinburgh completing his chartered accountant qualifications in 1948. Employment took him to Bournville working for Cadbury; then always wanting to raise his young family in Scotland, he returned to Edinburgh to start his employment with Ferranti. His army association continued when he enlisted as an officer in the Territorial Army, finally resigning his commission in 1961.
His life in Edinburgh allowed him to indulge his passion for climbing, hill walking, natural history and exploring places as yet unknown to him throughout Scotland. He was instrumental in organising field trips for the Edinburgh Natural History Society. With colleagues from Ferranti he started their Mountaineering Club and attended their 50th reunion in 2005. He was also still climbing Munros at the age of 84.
A continued interest in history, genealogy, and his own ancestry encouraged him to delve into the background of his father, Dugald. Research uncovered a connection to the Isle of Tiree where he knew his father had come from. In 1968, he received a letter in response to his enquiries from the island. It started “Dear Son”. Fifty years had passed before he met his own father.
He now discovered a completely fresh lineage. He discovered that his father had remarried and started another family and Donald and his family were now introduced to his half-brother, his two half-sisters and their families, living in the west of Scotland. By coincidence his half-brother, Douglas, had become a chartered accountant. Douglas was at that time financial director for Tennant Caledonian Breweries.
As a keen member of the Clan Macleod Society, Donald MacLeod became its president. In this role, he and Estelle travelled to Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and France, where national Clan MacLeod Societies had been established – as the Scottish ambassadors for the clan.
His long marriage to Estelle ended with her death in 2011. He maintained his independent living in his own home in Ravelston right up to becoming ill in December 2015. He wrote a story of his life and the influences that gave it such variety – more than an autobiography – in 2009, entitled I Remember.
He will be remembered for his meticulous attention to detail and organisation. This might best be seen with his extensive stamp collections (a lifelong fascination); he had particularly good albums of early stamps from the Falkland Islands and Argentina. But this belies another side to the character of Donald MacLeod: he never lost a yearning for the wild open spaces of his childhood in Patagonia and the wilderness of the Scottish Highland moorlands, as far away as possible from crowds and in his own words “being organised by others”.
Donald MacLeod died peacefully at the Lennox House Care Home after a stay there of less than a year.
He is survived by his four children, eight grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
KEITH MACLEOD
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