(Contributed by his family)
Dr Bill Abel will be remembered with gratitude by many Norfolk families for hi skilled and compassionate help with their mental health problems during his long service as consultant psychiatrist at Hellesdon Hospital, Norwich.
Bill Abel was born in Nottingham, where his father was an electrical engineer, and where he was an accomplished oarsman during his school-days. Always a committed Christian, he decided to enter medicine and trained at Edinburgh Medical School, where he met and married his future wife, Margaret, also a medical student. He retained a strong loyalty to Scotland throughout his life.
World War two broke out shortly after he qualified in 1939 and he immediately joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, spending a considerable period in the North African and Italian campaigns which gave him lasting memories of Assisi and its churches. After the war he spent some time in general practice and then returned to Edinburgh to train in Psychiatry, In 1957 he was appointed Consultant Psychiatrist at Hellesdon Hospital, work which included clinics at Kings Lynn and prison work. He remained there until his retirement.
Despite his nostalgia for Edinburgh and the Scottish mountains, Bill and Margaret soon became at home in Norfolk, enjoying the North Norfolk coast and countryside as well as Norwich as a city, where they made many friends. A keen naturalist and bird -watcher, Bill was an authority on Norfolk and Suffolk churches and also a talented musician.
Following his retirement in 1979 he continued to work for Priscilla Bacon Lodge ( a hospice / palliative care service in Norwick) for some years, but after the death of Margaret in 2003 he moved to South Wales to be closer to the family, dying peacefully at Willowbrook Nursing Home, Cardiff.
Bill and Margaret had five children, one (Lesley) deceased and twelve grandchildren.