David Postlethwaite

Marriage, music and Christianity were the stuff of life for David Postlethwaite, just as they were for the woman who was his childhood sweetheart and who became his wife of more than 40 years.
He played the organ at several churches in the Carlisle district and she sang and conducted two well known choirs. This she will continue to do, as her husband would have wished.
He was 65 when he died, suddenly, at his Little Corby home, just a day after returning from a business trip to Oldham, leaving his wife, son and daughter, two grandchildren, a great-grandchild and two brothers.
Already a pianist, 15-year-old David began to learn to play the organ at St Aidan’s Church, Carlisle, and he learned to play very well indeed. He eventually became the regular organist at Brampton Methodist Church, Scotby Parish Church and the United Reformed Church in Carlisle and he was always willing to stand in when organists at other churches were temporarily unavailable.
He managed to do all this, while holding down a full-time job in insurance and supporting his wife in her musical activities, as conductor of both the Cumbria-Cumberland Women’s Institute Choir and the Brampton Churches’ Choir.
In fact, she conducted him because he was a member of the churches’ choir, in which he sang with the basses. It was with this choir that he was well known for his jokes during after concert speeches.
His wife also sang – and sings – soprano. She was trained by such local musical luminaries as Ena Mitchell and Belle Wybergh.
Like her husband, she was a life-long Christian and they always joined a church wherever they lived, be it in Kendal, Stoke-on-Trent, Bristol, Cardiff or Carlisle, which were the towns and cities to which his job took them.
He was born at Stanwix, Carlisle, into a family with a farming background and he was only three when they all moved Moor Park Farm, Durdar.
Educated at Stoneraise School, he went on to Carlisle Grammar School and, from there, to a job with the Royal Insurance Company, where he became an insurance surveyor who moved around England somewhat.
He had been based for eight years in Cardiff when his brother, who lived in Gretna, saw an advertisement in The Cumberland News for a job with Bowring’s Insurance Brokers in Warwick Road, Carlisle. He told David who applied for the post, was successful and was thus able to return home.
He and his wife went to live in Castle Carrock, where they became closely involved in village activities. A further eight years on, in 2000, he set himself up in business as a risk management consultant and was doing this job right up to the time that he died.
He was engaged mainly by three companies, one of them based in Manchester and this was why he had been working in Oldham. He met Jean Banks, the girl who became his wife, when they were 14-year-olds at the Cecil Street Sunday School in Carlisle and they were married at the Cecil Street Methodist Church in March 1964.
In later years, when work and music commitments allowed, they spent several holidays abroad, many of them in Europe but others in the USA and China.
David Postlethwaite was cremated in Carlisle and a service to celebrate his life was held in Brampton Methodist Church.
Co-operative Funeral Care made the arrangements.