Jim McLean, a former Lochee Community Council chairman and a well-known figure in the area, has died after a lengthy battle with cancer.
Born in Dundee, he was educated at St Mary’s Lochee and St John’s High School.
Apprenticed to the GPO as a cable jointer, joining in November 1949, he rose to be assistant executive engineer. He retired in 1988.
Mr McLean married Margaret Barclay in 1958 and the couple had seven children.
One of the founder members of St Mary’s Parent Teacher Association, he was also president of St John’s PTA.
He had a spell as grand knight of St Columba and was a member and one-time chairman of Lochee Community Council.
A keen footballer, he played for Dunkeld amateurs, Lochee Hibs and Glentoran.
In 1995 he was responsible for motorists from Nairobi to Kampala sporting Dundee car stickers. During a 600-mile trek which he undertook to celebrate a walk made by five missionary priests one of them from St Mary’s Church in Lochee 100 years before, he handed over bagfuls of Dundee ties, scarves, car stickers and pens, as well as two civic plaques presented by the council.
Mr McLean was also a church archivist who looked after maintenance at St Mary’s, and wrote a booklet in 1991 to commemorate the church’s 125th anniversary.
Lochee councillor Tom Ferguson knew Mr McLean well, and said he would be badly missed in Lochee.
”He was a very community-oriented man and he certainly came to me with anything that needed done. He was a very active person and did a lot of work at the church and in the community. Jim was very well known in Lochee for his charitable work and he will be badly missed.”
Mr McLean, who was 78, is survived by his wife, their grown-up children John, Alastair, Roddy, Sandy, Drew, Catriona and Calum, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.