GCU People
Bill Johnston
(a tribute by William Gould, Webmaster, Goldsmiths Choral Union)
Bill Johnston, former GCU chairman, with his wife Su.
Bill Johnston is a man of almost seminal importance to Goldsmiths Choral Union. A member of GCU for some 45 years, he made a major contribution not only to GCU’s bass section, where his rich deep voice was a distinctive element, but also to the very organisation of the whole choir. It is largely through him and his firm, clear-sighted guidance and leadership as choir chairman that GCU was able to make a smooth transition from private ownership to its present status as an independent choir.
Born on 23 November 1927 in the village of Walkerburn, Peeblesshire, in the Borders region of Scotland, Bill moved with his family to Kilmarnock when he was 12 years old. Upon leaving school, he was apprenticed as a mechanical engineer to a local bus company. After his national service in the Royal Navy, where he worked on submarines, he entered technical college in Glasgow and studied mining engineering. During his training, Bill found out what it was like to work down a coal mine, Later he was employed in an iron-ore operation in Sierra Leone. In 1960, he founded his own business, Engineering Surveys Ltd, undertaking land surveys (including the production of maps) for civil engineering consultants. The company proved a major international success, and during the 1960s and 1970s Bill’s work took him to such places as Iran, Syria, Australia and the Far East. A founder-member of the Survey Association, a support organisation for people in his line of work, Bill was also actively involved in Masonic work. In 1988 he sold his very successful business and settled into retirement.
Bill met his future wife Su late in 1956 and the couple were married two years later. They had three children: Kathy, Ed and Eliza. Outside business, Bill had a wealth of interests and managed to combine choral singing and Masonic activities with sailing, gardening, and opera-going.
Both Bill and Su began singing with Goldsmiths Choral Union in 1958. Bill’s business experience and skill as a manager and leader were to prove invaluable when in 1973 he became chairman of GCU and oversaw our organization's change from a group wholly owned by its founder, Frederick Haggis, to an independent, self-governing promoter of amateur choral performances – one of increasingly few such groups still working in central London. Working with Music Director Brian Wright and an active choir committee, he helped keep the organisation on an even keel during what could so easily have been a very tricky period. He held the chairmanship for eight years. During Bill’s time with the choir, Brockham Warren, the family home bought in 1964, was the idyllic setting for several GCU summer socials. Bill and Su’s children also sang with us at various times, and Kathy even met her husband George Dallas through the choir. GCU owes Bill Johnston a great debt for his help in making the choir what it is today.
Goldsmiths Choral Union acknowledges with grateful thanks the assistance of Bill Johnston's family in the preparation of this tribute. The information contained in it is taken from a brief account of his life that Bill wrote shortly before he died, with supplementary material provided by Su. The resulting biographical sketch, together with a selection of family photographs, two of which appear here, was distributed at Bill's memorial service on 31 January 2004.
Bill, Su and some of their family.