Tributes have been paid to former DC Thomson sub-editor and Ninewells phlebotomist Catherine ‘Kate’ Matheson who has died aged 81.
Born in January 1943 to David and Winifred Molly McIntosh, she spent the first 10 years of her early life in the family home at 262 King Street, Broughty Ferry.
Kate’s younger brother, Iain, was born in 1949.
In her youth, Catherine attended Eastern Primary School and then Grove Academy, where she excelled in sports including badminton and tennis.
After passing her Highers, she attended the then ‘Queen’s College’, at that time part of St Andrew’s University on a laboratory technicians course.
Kate then went to work at Mylnfield Horticultural Institute (now the James Hutton Institute) but eventually had to leave as she was allergic to some of the plants!
She then successfully applied for a job at DC Thomson as a trainee sub-editor in the old fiction department, where she met her husband Sinclair (Clair) who joined the firm after Kate was already there.
While at DC Thomson they worked on the successful teenage magazine ‘Jackie’.
Broughty Ferry church wedding
Sinclair courted Kate for quite a while and her brother remembers him, on a number of occasions, sitting in his old Humber Hawk car outside their house and Kate stubbornly staying in her room and refusing his advances.
The couple were eventually married in St Stephen’s Church Broughty Ferry in September 1965, having their reception at the Angus Hotel.
On arrival at the hotel they were surprised to see a large crowd waiting outside, they thought, waiting for them.
But it transpired the crowds were there for ‘Jack Milroy’, who was there with his partner Ricky Fulton (Francie & Josie) to open the new shopping centre.
Kate and Sinclair went on to have two daughters – Lesley, who was born in 1967, and Kirsten, born in 1969.
The family eventually moved across the Tay to Wormit, where they spent many happy years together.
Holidays were a feature of family life and they travelled throughout Scotland and beyond, seeing cities as far flung as Moscow and Quebec.
Kate also continued to pursue her sporting interests, playing tennis a Broughty Ferry Campfield courts, Dundee West End and at Newport.
Whilst at West End, she was in the team that got through to the finals of the Scottish Ladies Club Championship, unfortunately losing to a strong team from Edinburgh Blackhall.
Kate later worked as a phlebotomist at Ninewells Hospital, alongside her good friend Margaret Grewar.
She worked at Ninewells for around two decades before being forced to retire due to rheumatoid arthritis, which also put an end to her many sporting activities.
Kate died at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee on May 9.
She is sadly preceded in death by her daughter Kirsten, who died on April 16.
You can read the family’s announcement here.
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