A great great grandfather who was an active fisherman until five years ago has celebrated his 100th birthday.
George Wild, a resident at Colten Care’s Whitecliffe House in Blandford, is the oldest member of the Piscatorial Society.
The angling society was founded in 1836 and is one of the oldest in the world.
Mr Wild, a former civil engineer, was born in Derbyshire and educated at Hulme Grammar School in Greater Manchester.
After gaining a civil engineering degree at Imperial College in London, he joined John Mowlem, the construction and civil engineering group with roots in Dorset, and was involved in building underground tunnels in East London.
A member of the 85th Field Regiment (Royal Artillery) of the Territorial Army, Mr Wild joined the first war course at the British Army’s Staff College in Camberley in 1939.
He was subsequently posted to Corsham as an artillery staff officer where he met his future wife, Miss Nancy Tilley, while on a quest to hire a horse. The couple married in 1942 and later had two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary.
Mr Wild joined Lord Mountbatten’s staff in the Far East for the remainder of the Second World War before going back to John Mowlem for the rest of his working life.
His job involved extensive travel to many parts of the world on major civil engineering projects.
In 1956 he went to Persia, as it was then known, before returning two years later to take charge of the building of Immingham dry docks in Lincolnshire. At least four years were spent in charge of Mowlem East Africa in Kenya before Mr Wild came back to head office in London and was appointed as a civil engineering director.
In retirement, he lived with Nancy at Inkpen near Hungerford in Berkshire where the couple shared a love of fishing, country life and ponies.
Mr Wild fished until the age of 95 when he could still walk along the banks of the Avon in the Woodford Valley.near Salisbury.
Nancy died in 2002 and Mr Wild came to live in Dorset, initially with his younger daughter, Mary Anderson, and then a special friend, Gillian Hopkinson. He moved to Whitecliffe House in 2012.
Mr Wild celebrated his 100th birthday with family and friends. Apart from his two daughters he also has four grandchildren, ten great grandchildren and one great, great grandchild.
Mrs Anderson said her father believed in ‘moderation in everything’ and enjoyed an excellent sense of humour. “When he was asked to what he attributed his longevity my father immediately retorted ‘not dying’ which is typical of his dry humour,” she added.
