Highland dentist who served the biggest practice area in the UK
Born: July 5, 1931;
Died: December 13, 2017
JACK Slorach, who has died aged 86, was a well-known dental surgeon who, for more than two decades, served the biggest practice area in the UK. Based in Golspie in Sutherland, Mr Slorach reached some of his customers in the remoter villages and hamlets of the west coast by towing a mobile dentistry clinic behind his Land Rover. He covered the whole of the county of Sutherland - an area of more than 2,000 square miles
Born John Joseph Slorach, Jack as he was always known was a member of a prominent West of Scotland medical family. His father was Dr Charles Slorach, who rose to become Chief Medical Officer of Health for Dunbartonshire and whose family had been clinicians for several preceding generations.
Jack Slorach's links with the Highlands began when he was enrolled as a boarder at the Benedictine Abbey School in the village of Fort Augustus, at the southern end of Loch Ness.
In 1949 he was admitted to the University of Glasgow's Dentistry School, but national service with the Royal Army Dental Corps at several bases in England meant that he was not formally qualified to practise with a BDS (Batchelor of Dental Surgery) degree until 1958.
He had got to know Inverness quite well during his days at the Abbey School, and he moved to the city to start his professional career at the Ness Bank practice there; he would spend a total of 15 years in the city and whilst there he met his wife Ann, (nee Ross), originally from Dornoch, Sutherland, who pre-deceased him in 2005.
Mr Slorach was an active sportsman during his time in Inverness; he was an early skier on the Cairngorm Mountain slopes, played hockey for the Highland Club in the Scottish National League and often relaxed on the golf course where he played off a low handicap. He was a lifelong folk and traditional music enthusiast, having been a founder-member of The Corbie Club while studying at Glasgow University.
In 1975 Jack and Ann moved to Golspie when he took up his NHS community dentistry post for the county.
This was to be his home for the rest of his life, until he was admitted to Migdale Hospital in nearby Bonar Bridge during the second half of last year. It was in Golspie that their now grown-up family of five was raised: John, Charles, Duncan Siobhan and Andrew.
After retirement in 1996, he suffered various health problems, having a heart by-pass operation in 1997 and he had a leg amputated in 2005, but even the latter impairment did not keep him away from the golf-course.
His daughter Siobhan has a career as a dental therapist and she lectures on the subject to students in Inverness. Grand-daughter Sinead also qualified from Glasgow University as a dentist in the 2017, while her younger sister Niamh is also upholding the family medicine tradition as she is now studying dentistry, at Jack Slorach's alma mater.
Jack Slorach is survived by his children, seven grandchildren, and a great-grand-daughter.
BILL MOWAT
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