After living a full and colorful life, Fergus Dane John Lane died following a long battle with dementia on Saturday, September 28th, 2019 surrounded by his family.
Fergus was born on September 4th, 1939 in Canterbury, Kent, England. His mother, Alice Lane (née Moorcroft), and grandmother had fled London following Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland and the declaration of war. His father, Lieutenant Commander Jeremiah Lane, served on a Royal Navy submarine and joined the family after the end of hostilities. Fergus earned a law degree from the University of Southampton in 1960 and, deciding probably a bit too late that law was not for him, became a purser in the Merchant Navy. After another go at school, Fergus found his vocation with a medical degree from the University of Bristol in 1970. He saw more of the world, serving as a ship’s doctor, studying in India, practicing medicine in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), and, after a postal strike thwarted an attempted relocation to Canada, moving to the United States in the 1970s. He became a US citizen in 1981. His first stop was Syracuse University where he earned his US medical certification, and then Connecticut where he worked as an anesthesiologist at Bristol Hospital. He met Elizabeth “Libby” Stevenson, a nurse at the hospital, and in 1983 they eloped to Las Vegas. Fergus retired in 2001 and spent his remaining years making numerous trips to his friends and family back in Britain.
Fergus is survived by his wife Libby and their five children: Tyler, his wife Erie, and their children Finn and Matilda “Tilly”; Hastings; Madison; Mary; and Kathryn.
Arrangements were private.
In lieu of flowers, we ask for donations to charities that rehome and care for cats like Cat’s Protection in Fergus’s native Britain. He loved cats almost as much as they loved him.
Please visit Fergus' memorial website at www.FUNKFUNERALHOME.com
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