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ANGOVE Roger Clare MB BS FRCP FRACP

1915-1998

Roger Clare Angove was born in Adelaide, on 27th March 1915. He was one of the two sons of Edward Laurence Angove, vigneron, and Dorothy Cotgrave, nee Clare. The Angove family are well-known SA winemakers. His father was killed in France, serving with 10 Bn, on 23rd August 1918; his maternal grandparents, Chapman James Clare RAN and Ellen Minnie, nee Cotgrave, from Cottesloe, WA, came to SA, with their daughter and grandsons, to assist in caring for Roger and his brother, Peter. Angove was educated at St Peter’s College, where his mother taught in Palm House. He studied medicine at the University of Adelaide and graduated MB BS in 1938. His house surgeon year, in 1939, was at the RAH. He joined the RAAF at the end of the year.

Angove, who had served with the AAMC in 1938 to 1939, enlisted in the RAAF Medical Branch, on 5th February 1940, at the rank of flight lieutenant. He attended the 3rd STT Sydney, from 29th April 1940, Station Headquarters, Darwin, from 18th August 1940 and 5 Recruit Depot, Perth, WA from 30th June 1941. He embarked from Sydney for Canada on 8th August 1941 with the RAAF Empire Air Trainees, and on to the UK on 15th September 1941.  Stationed in Yorkshire and Halton Hall initially he served in the Middle-East, in Palestine and Suez Canal area in 1942. Then in  the Western Desert up to Tunisia, Algeria and Libya (1943), in medical support of 458 squadron, from 19th March 1942 until he returned to the UK, via a posting in Sicily, with 458 Squadron on 26th October 1943. Angove was promoted to temporary squadron leader on 1st August 1943. He left the UK on 14th December 1943 for Australia via the USA, arriving in Sydney on 21st January 1944. He served at the RAAF Concord Hospital, in Australia, until his discharge on 4th October 1945.

Appointed medical registrar at the RAH, in July 1945 for six months, Angove embarked on a career as a physician. He passed the MRACP early in 1946, and was a resident physician at the Broken Hill hospital for the last six months of 1946. Overseas training at a London Hospital in 1947, was followed by obtaining the MRCP and took up RMO posts at the Whittington Hospital, NE London, Harefield Hospital, and, in thoracic medicine at the Brompton Hospital, London. Angove took a three-month commission in 1949, to Scandinavia for the British Council reporting on BCG vaccination. He then returned to Adelaide, in late 1949, to private practice and an appointment as honorary clinical assistant to the Director of Medicine at the RAH; later an honorary assistant physician and honorary physician at the RAH. He established the thoracic medicine unit in 1972, and remained at the RAH until his retirement in 1980. Angove was a renowned and excellent teacher at the RAH; his stentorian voice was famous. He travelled overseas to the Mayo Clinic in Boston, and the UK for post graduate study in 1968. President of the Thoracic Society of Australia from 1972 to 1974 he had many other interests including Councillor and President of the SA Tuberculosis Association. From 1980 to 1986 he became a Consulting Physician in private practice in North Adelaide.  He was President of Bedford Industries from 1956 to 1964, on the Council of the Royal Flying Doctor Society Central section, and the AMA.    He was the President of the Burnside Historical Society from 1981 to 1983 and formed a triumphant committee in 1983 to “Save the Grange Vineyards”. A keen ornithologist and fisherman and excellent shot he had a wide range of friends.  He married Margaret Eleanor Formby, a nurse, in 1951, and they were to have two sons and two daughters. Their beach house at Robe, in the south east of SA, was to be the site of many enjoyable family holidays. Roger Clare Angove died, in Adelaide, on 18th July 1998 and was survived by his wife and children.

Source

Blood, Sweat and Fears III: Medical Practitioners South Australia, who Served in World War 2. 

Swain, Jelly, Verco, Summers. Open Books Howden, Adelaide 2019. 

Uploaded by Annette Summers AO RFD