Charles Sharpe, who has died aged 75, left Dundee in 1957 aged 12 but remained a passionate advocate for the city throughout his life.
He founded the website leavingdundee.blogsport.com in which he shared memories, photographs and drawings of his early life.
Charles spent his career in teaching in England and also founded an online publication goodenoughcaring.com for dealing with matters relating to parenting, foster parenting, residential child care and youth support.
He died in October last year but his family are returning to Dundee next month to scatter his ashes at Dundee Crematorium.
Charles’s wife Jackie said: “It will be a small family ceremony officiated by crematorium staff and we will unveil a plaque in Charles’s memory in the city he loved so dearly.
“He was passionate about his home city and a devoted follower of Dundee FC. On every trip back home he went to Dens if possible.”
Charles William Scott Sharpe was born in Dundee Royal Infirmary in 1945, the son of Charles Sharpe and his wife Christina. Mr Sharpe was to become an engineer and designer at Timex in Dundee.
Charles was educated at Liff Road Primary School where he was awarded the dux medal.
He spent a short time at Harris Academy before his family relocated to work in Coventry.
Teacher training
Charles completed his secondary education in the city before training as a teacher at Trent Park College in Middlesex in the mid 1960s.
He went on to teach at preparatory schools, private schools and residential schools for children and young people who were in public care.
Over the years, he designed and taught courses in child development and therapeutic approaches to residential child care, to students in work-based settings, further education and higher education.
During the 1990s Charles was at one time the only male Further Education Funding Council inspector for child care and child development in England.
Yearning for Dundee
On his leavingdundee website, Charles, who worked finally as a psychodynamic psychotherapist until weeks before his death, wrote fondly of visits to Frankie Davie’s cafe in Dundee and the Palace Theatre with his grandmother, while Charles’s wife drew illustrations of the landmarks.
He also devoted a section to his beloved Dundee FC and in particular his visit with his wife to see Dundee clinch the Championship in 2014.
Jackie said: “Through these articles, poems and photographs, his life in Scotland and since leaving at the age of 12 up until the present, comes into sharp focus, as does his wit and humour, and his interest and love of people around him.”
Charles, who lived in Totnes in Devon, is survived by his wife Jackie, children Iain and Jennie, stepdaughter Alison, and step grandchildren and grandchildren, Ben, Laura, Spike, Jed and Naya.