Mike Thurgur obituary
My friend Mike Thurgur, who has died of cancer aged 82, was a superb squash player who represented England and Great Britain in the 1970s. He was first selected for the British touring team to South Africa in 1970 and in 1974 took part in the European Championships with the England team before captaining a British squad to New Zealand in the same year.
He continued playing to a high standard even in relatively advanced years, and after moving to Wales in 2000 he became No 1 Welsh veteran, as well as national coach. In 2001, competing under the Welsh flag, he was British champion in the over 60s age group and, in Melbourne, world champion.
Mike was born in Paignton, Devon, to Dennis, a pharmacist, and his wife, Joan (nee Yates). He attended Brentwood school in Essex before studying history at Exeter University, where he played for the squash team and in 1961 won the Devon county championships for the first of 14 times.
After university he began work as a valuation surveyor with the Greater London council in 1962, but quickly abandoned that job to take a diploma in education at Exeter University, and in 1964 became a history teacher at Millfield school in Somerset.
In the mid-1960s Mike became involved with the Pilsdon Community, a Christian initiative based around a farm in Dorset. There he met Ruth Smith, a singing teacher and counsellor whose parents had been founders of the community. They married in 1967 and Mike was careful to live by the tenets of acceptance and friendship that he had found at Pilsdon.
He and Ruth later spent a year in Christchurch in New Zealand, where Mike took on teaching work, before returning to the UK, where he taught at Stanbridge Earls school near Romsey, Hampshire (1976-79), and then at St Christopher school in Letchworth, Hertfordshire (1979-99).
After he had retired, he and Ruth moved to Hyssington, near Montgomery in Powys, where they threw themselves into local life. Always incredibly fit, Mike greatly enjoyed walking in the Welsh hills and in his last months was still moving logs around with the same verve that had sustained him on squash courts all over the world. He was a wonderful person: modest, erudite and full of integrity.
Mike is survived by Ruth, their two children, Rebecca and Justin, their grandchildren Jonah, Milo and Lily, and his sister June.