The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Tom Tait, former Rattray minister, aged 89
Minister, health services champion and Air Training Corps chaplain Tom Tait has died aged 89.
Throughout the 1980s and ’90s he held local and national health authorities to account and then went on to act as an advocate for mental health patients in Tayside and at the State Hospital, Carstairs.
He was minister at Rattray Parish Church between 1972 and 1997 after an early life of service in Christian mission.
In 2011 he was made an MBE for voluntary services to the Air Training Corps.
William Thomas Tait was born in Dunfermline in 1931 and educated at Dunfermline High School.
After leaving school he worked as a railway clerk and his Christian faith led him to become captain of the 4th Dunfermline company the Boys’ Brigade.
He later joined the BB staff at its Glasgow headquarters and met his future wife Irene, a Lifeboys leader, on training courses.
The Boys’ Brigade supported a church mission at Keith Falconer Hospital on the Arabian peninsula and Mr Tait spent five years working there from 1962 to 1967.
Irene was working at the Christian Medical College, Ludhiana, India, and both returned to the UK in the same year. They married 1968.
In 1980, Mr Tait was appointed to Perth and Kinross Health Council as representative of Dunkeld and Meigle Presbytery and became a staunch defender of local health provision.
He served for 11 years, seven of them as chairman, before the formation of the new Tayside Health Council in 1991.
Mr Tait served on that body for eight years, six of them as chairman.
Between 1993 and 1998 he was a member of the secretary of state’s advisory panel on the registration of nursing homes and private hospitals.
In 1993 member of in he became a Tayside Health
Board’s quality monitor team and served until 1998.
Mr Tait represented Tayside on the Scottish Association of Health Councils for five years from 1993 and was chairman in 1997-98.
Not long after arriving in Blairgowrie, Mr Tait became chaplain of No 2519 (Strathmore) Air Training Corps.
He was commissioned in the RAF voluntary reserve (training branch) in 1977 and became commanding officer of his unit with the rank of flight lieutenant.
He went on to become regional chaplain and then corps chaplain for the ATC, heading a team of 700 chaplains across the UK.
Although he retired in 1997, Mr Tait continued to preach and act as interim moderator at churches in the area.
His son Steven said he took his last service at Alyth about two years ago.
“My father never stopped. He was always active and always standing up for people,” said Steven.
“Even after he retired, he continued to act as an advocate for mental health patients at Murray Royal, Perth, and Carstairs.”
Mr Tait died at home on Easter Sunday and the following day his fifth great-grandchild was born.
Mr Tait is survived by Irene, children Mahri, Steven and Alison, nine
grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
His funeral will take place at Kinclaven Church next Wednesday.
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