A family has paid tribute to their husband, father and grandfather, a cheerful dentist with a twinkle in his eye who swapped Lancashire and the army for Bury St Edmunds.
For 25 years, Henry Malcolm Bowling was the warm and jovial dentist putting patients at ease at the Guildhall Dental Surgery in the west Suffolk town.
His patients were incredibly fond of Malcolm, which is how he was known to friends and family. Indeed, his family laughed that shopping on market day took twice as long, for Malcolm would be stopped umpteen times by patients keen to chat.
At Christmas, Malcolm would be weighed down with gifts, from wine to boxes of broken biscuits and, surprisingly, bags of nuts.
This last gift became a staple family joke. Malcolm, who was known for his keen sense of humour, would tease his two children that these nuts were a present from an old lady with ill-fitting dentures, and had started life as chocolate-covered Brazil nuts. While she had enjoyed the chocolate, Malcolm joked, she had found the hard centres more difficult, and so had kindly passed them on to the Bowlings to enjoy.
Malcolm was born on September 24, 1935, in Chorley, Lancashire. He was the youngest of four boys born to John, a farmer, and his wife, Annie.
The four brothers enjoyed a close relationship. Their parents died young, and so Malcolm’s brothers, Brian, Geoff and Ralph, rallied together to take care of their little brother.
From childhood, Malcolm was obsessed with cricket. He was a talented left-handed batsman, and quickly rose from opening for Leigh Grammar to the Lancashire league, where he once played Garfield Sobers, former cricketer for the West Indies.
After serving his National Service with the Royal Signals, Malcolm studied dentistry at Birmingham University. Here, he captained the university cricket side and met medical student Pamela Hunt, the woman who was to become his wife for almost 60 years.
They married on September 11, 1965.
For five years, Malcolm served as dentist to the Grenadier Guards in Germany – although he joked with his family that this was really an excuse to play more cricket with the Divisional and British Army teams. On occasions, Malcolm would be helicoptered across the country to play ringer in other regiments’ teams.
Even in the army, Malcolm’s relaxed, cheerful disposition remained. He would often be reprimanded for wearing a sheepskin coat over his uniform, and once, the regimental barber was sent to his surgery by the Sergeant Major and ordered Malcolm into his own dentist’s chair for a haircut.
Malcolm and Pam settled in Bury St Edmunds in 1970, to be closer to Geoff. Their eldest child, James, was born in 1968, while their daughter, Katie, completed the family in 1973.
As a father, James said that Malcolm was loving and uncritical, and always incredibly proud of his children’s achievements. Family holidays were often spent in the Alps, with Malcolm instilling a great love of skiing in both his children.
Towards the end of his career, Malcolm trained in orthodontics and became an advisor to many practices across Suffolk. This included prisons – and Malcolm later claimed to have met Moors murderer Myra Hindley, and to have passed gangster Reggie Kray in a corridor.
In his later years, Malcolm became a keen golfer. Flempton Golf Club became a second home, where he won the odd trophy and was made Club Captain. He shared this passion with James, with Malcolm’s left-handed hook and James’ right handed slice giving rise to many hours searching the balls in the rough together.
For the whole of his life, Malcolm kept laughing. He would regale his family with anecdotes about the people he met which would leave them in tears, and delighted in anything ridiculous or anyone who took themselves too seriously.
He made friends wherever he went, and these friendships followed him through life, from contemporaries from his university days to fellow sportsmen and birdwatchers.
Malcolm died on May 15, aged 88. He is survived by his wife, Pam, his two children James and Katie, and his five grandchildren, Ralph, Joseph, Thomas, James and Anna.
To read more tribute to those from Suffolk we have loved and lost, click here
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