We post this with great sadness.
We have been told that Franks Sanders passed away at the weekend at his daughter’s house in the Northampton area.
Ann Ainsworth adds: ” I have happy memories of DPQL meetings at Frank ‘s house both before and after Janet, his first wife, died.
“Like John I also remember Frank as an accomplished quiz setter and question master for the Derbyshire Rural Community Council quizzes broadcast on Radio Derby. It was largely down to the network Frank created through that annual event that led to the rapid expansion of the quiz league in its early years.”
And Mike McKenna notes, “Frank was a stalwart of the in-house quiz competition at Rolls-Royce & Associates, with Jock Smith, before the Radio Derby connection.”
We will post more details as we receive them. For the time being we will enable comments to be posted, should you wish to share memories of Frank’s work. Click on the word Comment in green to see comments or to add one. We will try to approve comments as quickly as possible.
I first met Frank Sanders when RR&A (as it was then) organised a lunchtime Interdepartmental quiz in around 1972. It finished up with his team, the Technical Authors, beating the team I played in, Materials & Chemistry, in the Final. I think the Finals went 2-1 to Tech Authors over us. One Final was broadcast over Radio Derby and this led to Top Firm being established, I had the pleasure of joining Frank and others on the winning team for the first two years. We were knocked out in the semi finals of the following year . After that Frank and I took over writing the questions for the Radio Derby Top Firm quiz for a number of years until finally the quiz expired on cost grounds! Our next joint venture was writing the questions for the County Quiz, after a while I dropped out but Frank carried on. Later I was on the receiving end when I was recruited to the Mickleover team in the County Quiz. I always admired Frank’s style as a question writer, he never chose subjects to show how clever he was. His contribution to the start up of DPQL is for others to report but he will long be remembered for it I am sure.
We both retired about the same time and I recall the sorrow he had when Janet, his first wife, died from a brain tumour. He bore it bravely and I was so glad when he met and married Maureen; we used to visit one another every so often. My last contact with them was last year when we met on the car park of B & Q and had a good chat.
One of my favourite memories of him was after the Mickleover team had won the County Quiz, it was nip and tuck when the last question came up which I answered and thereby took the Trophy. Afterwards Frank said to me “when I turned the page and saw the question I thought this is right up Terry’s street”; it was about the uniform of the Household Cavalry.
Farewell my old friend you will be sadly missed.
Terry McDonald