Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Sports enthusiast Bill left trail of memories for family and friends
GOLF enthusiast and family man William “Bill” Robertson Stewart has died peacefully at home in Monifieth at the age of 76.
The former captain of Abertay Golf Club, and chairman of the Monifieth Links Management Committee, was known as Billy to his family and Bill to the many friends and acquaintances he made in the Angus town and further afield.
Bill’s son Andrew said: “He was such a cheery, happy person who cherished the company of others and the family are devastated by his sudden departure.”
Bill’s childhood was spent in Forres Avenue in Kirkton, Dundee, in a house he shared with his parents and siblings John, Jean, Isobel, Margaret, Evelyn and Elizabeth.
Football was his first sporting love. He won the Sports Cup and the league in schools football before going on to play as an amateur with Ashdale in the north-east of the city.
He worked “on the milk” as a schoolboy to save up enough money to buy his first set of golf clubs. In 1959, he started work as an apprentice fitter with Cairds jute mill.
Around this time he met his first wife, Pat. They had one son, Andrew.
Work took him to NCR where he joined the company’s golf club based in Monifieth, establishing links with the town that would last 50 years.
In 1977, he started work with Watson’s whisky bond, meeting his second wife Norma at the company.
They were married in 1980 and step-siblings Eileen, Gordon and Lynne joined Andrew in their home in Dundee.
Due to the economic downturn at the start of the 1980s Bill and Norma took Andrew and Lynne to South Africa for three years.
It was an experience they enjoyed but the family were happy to return to Scotland.
Latterly Bill, by then widowed and living in Monifieth, met Mary, with whom he spent his final years.