Roger
Nicholas
Hedley
Thomas
is the
son
of
Gordon
David
Thomas
and
Mary
Lavender
Greenhough.
Roger was born
in 1950 (date suppressed)
in a nursing home at 116 Harborne Road, Quinton, Birmingham at 3.30 p.m., weighing in at 9 lbs., and then returned to his parents home at 491 Hagley Road West, Quinton, Birmingham.
His detailed family history can be found here:
Roger Nicholas Hedley Thomas (1950- )
He was christened
on Sunday 4 June 1950
at St Peter's Church, Harborne, Birmingham.
Roger married
Margaret
Cundall
on Saturday 23 September 1972
in the Abbey Church of St Editha, Polesworth, near Tamworth, Staffordshire.
The witnesses at the marriage were Gordon David Thomas (Roger's father) and Isaac Parker Cundall (Margaret's father).
Roger was
22 years old
and
Margaret was
24 years old
when they married.
Their wedding reception was held at Drayton Manor Park.
He
had the following children from
his
marriage to
Margaret
Cundall:
The places where he lived have been identified as:
| From |
To |
Place |
Source of Information |
| 1950 |
1957 |
491, Hagley Road West, Quinton, Birmingham B32. |
|
| 1957 |
1972 |
34, Oakham Road, Harborne, Birmingham B17 9DG. |
|
| 1972 |
1975 |
93, Pooley View, Castle Park Estate, Polesworth, near Tamworth, Staffordshire B78 1BT. |
|
| 1975 |
2007 |
101, Knightlow Road, Harborne, Birmingham B17 8PX. |
|
| 2007 |
2007 |
26, Rushbrook Road, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire CV37 7JW. |
|
| 2007 |
now |
Warwick
(Details suppressed). |
|
Roger
is now retired, and was
a
Project Manager in Computer Systems.
Roger went to Chigwell House School at 5, Highfield Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham between 1955 and 1961. He then went to King Edwards Five Ways Grammar School in Scotland Lane, Bartley Green, Birmingham between 1961 and 1967. See 'Pictures' link above for school photographs.
Roger enjoyed Mathematics at school. He successfully took 3 'O' levels one year early, ended up with 5 'O' levels altogether in Mathematics, English, French, Physics and Geography. He joined the Sixth Form studying Mathematics, Further Mathematics and Physics. He took the Mathematics (Pure Mathematics & Theoretical Mechanics) 'A' level one year early and passed with a grade 'E'. He then found the subjects were getting progressively harder, and decided that getting a job was the best option.
GEC Magnet Computer Bureau, Electric Avenue, Witton, Birmingham
He started work at GEC Magnet Computer Bureau in Electric Avenue, Witton, Birmingham as a trainee Computer Operator in 1967. He worked in the Operations Department for about 3 years, graduating to become a Shift Leader responsible for a team of Computer Operators in 1969.
The company had Honeywell mainframe computers. The first one was a Honeywell 800 and it filled a large room! This would have had less power than a pc today! They then added a Honeywell 200 computer, which was used for small processing and to carry out the printing in an off-line manner. Later a Honeywell 1250 was installed, and was used to run the whole bureau service for the GEC customers. To give an idea of its size and power, it had all of 64 KB of memory, and the disc drives which were about a half metre in diameter with 6 discs vertically had about the same capacity as a floppy disc!
Roger was working a 3-shift system, days, evenings and nights. It was difficult to acclimatise to the change in working hours, but he enjoyed the night shift, with the eeriness of the whole works being empty and traveling back home in the early hours of the morning. He was often stopped by the police who wondered what he was doing out at that time of night in a red Morgan sports car!
Roger started to teach himself programming whilst he was a Computer Operator, working in direct machine language, and later in assembler languages such as ARGOS.
Roger then moved out of Operations in 1970 into Computer Programming and Systems Analysis, using the COBOL programming language. He designed the main Project Costing and Financial Accounting system used by the then GEC-Marconi, a system called MARCAS (MARconi Computerised Accounting System). This computer system was in operation from the early 1980's until today. He became Project Leader in 1978 and later Project Manager for the development, support and maintenance of this system in 1987.
It was at GEC Magnet Computer Bureau that Roger met his wife to be Margaret Cundall, who was working with GEC as a programmer. She was living at the time in a flat on the Chester Road, Birmingham. She later moved to a small 3 storey block of flats at Brookvale Court, Erdington.
The company went through many name changes and locations. GEC Magnet Computer Bureau became Midland Computer Services Ltd and later merged with a computer centre at Stafford to became GEC Computer Services Ltd. Roger moved from Witton to Tamebridge near Walsall and later to their head office in Stafford. The company was then merged into EASAMS, which was part of the GEC Marconi Group. In 2000, EASAMS was split into two (Marconi Software Solutions and EASAMS), and the EASAMS part of the company was bought by the Birmingham based company, ITNET. In 2005, ITNET were bought by Serco. Roger retired in 2007.
Roger had his first house in Polesworth built from new, and it was completed in time to move into after his marriage. He stayed there for about 3 years, and then bought his grandfather's house at 101 Knightlow Road. This house needed extensive renovation, as his grandparents were old and had not been able to maintain the property properly for many years.
Roger always enjoyed playing chess, as did his father Gordon, who taught Roger to play. In his second year at Five Ways, Roger was awarded Half House Colours in a chess competition. The fascination for the game of chess carries on with Roger's son Christopher.
Roger became interested in family history research in November 1997 when he and his brother Mike started to try to expand the initial documentation that had been produced, mainly from memory, by their father, Gordon.
