It is with great sadness that G4G notes the death of longtime G4G community member Laurie Brokenshire (Oct 20, 1952 – Aug 4, 2017) from England.
A noted combinatorial and mechanical puzzle solver, who was reputed to have the largest collection of such puzzles in the UK, Laurie was also a renowned chess player, and accomplished magician. He found out soon before G4G12 that he had terminal brain cancer. His final year and a half were crammed with energetic activities including endurance swims with family members to raise money for various charities. He’d first swum the English Channel thirty years earlier, and he was known for cycling huge distances (with his wife Ethell) all over the globe to International Puzzle Parties (IPP). He organized the 2014 IPP34 in his native UK.
Lew Goldklang recalls:
“Laurie lived a full and energetic life. He was blessed with a quick, engaging, clever mind, a glowing cheerfulness, and a loving family. I admired his unusual skill at writing mirror-image cursive script fluently. He was an enthusiastic performer at the Gatherings, a reliable correspondent, and a good friend. He will be sorely missed.”
G4G board member Rob Jones concurs:
“Laurie was a good friend. He was one of the people I consulted as we were preparing for G4G12. His formidable skills as a magician, sharp analytical mind, and unsurpassed knowledge of mechanical puzzles distinguished him within the G4G community. It was his tremendous warmth, insatiable curiosity, and eagerness to share his knowledge, however, which we will miss the most. Everyone loved him.”
Laurie Brokenshire, or Lt. Brokenshire as I knew him in 1976, was a wonderful man. His skills at magic were in addition to his teaching skills and his protracted talent as a regular guy. I really liked him, and outside of the classroom, I seemed to spend time at various events that he attended at HMS Fisgard which usually left him opportunity at the end of the night to get his cards out or the little bottle of scent which we could never ever see him suddenly produce.
Something I particularly remember of him, directly before going home for Xmas leave, he walked into our maths class with a box full of wooden, metal, etc puzzles. He distributed them to each one of us and allowed us to fiddle with them whilst he explained the different elements of puzzledom and how they had the same properties as did a good joke, the surprise, the unexpected attribute which deprived you of getting the joke or seeing the answer before the end was revealed.
There was one wooden puzzle that looked like two stepped pyramids base to base. I asked him if I could take it home over leave to complete it. He agreed but put the puzzle in a plastic bag and disassembled it with his hands inside the bag and handed me the bag full of little wooden sticks. Over Xmas leave, I completed the puzzle, or so I thought, I handed him the puzzle in one piece, he examined it and concluded that I had left two key pieces instead of one.
It is very sad that he is not with us anymore, but I did get a chance to chat with him on the net a few years ago, just to say hi.
I am glad he had such a positive effect on the world and that we are still talking about him today.
I remember when I was a Part 2 instructor in HMS Raleigh and Laurie was the Captain of Raleigh, so we were required to visit him at the end of each course to brief him on the class, However my fellow instructor Spike Hughes was in his early days of magic, Of course Laurie used to love spike coming to the meeting as they would go in full magic mode more often than not forgetting the class brief and just doing tricks, There could be an Admiral waiting outside but he would just be doing magic.
A very nice man RIP Laurie