IRF Fellow passes away
James P. Coree, IRF Fellow from Sierra Leone, 1956, passed away on September 17, 2008.
Coree graduated with First Class Honours in Civil Engineering from University College Cork, Ireland in 1942. He then worked as a surveyor in Scotland for the war effort in coal production.
In 1946 he joined the British Colonial Service and was posted to Sierra Leone, West Africa, where he served in many positions and locations, mainly in the transportation field (roads and airfields), where he rose to the rank of District Engineer. In 1956, he was awarded an IRF Fellowship and spent one year at Purdue University, Indiana and received the award for the Outstanding IRF Fellow - an honor he valued for the rest of his life. In 1958, after a brief return to Sierra Leone, he was re-assigned to the British Colony of Aden in south Arabia.
He served in Aden from 1958 until Independence in 1967. By this time he had risen from Assistant Deputy Director of Public Works (Aden Colony) to State Engineer for the then Federation of South Arabia.
Upon returning to the UK in 1967, he joined the Ministry of Transport, London Highways Division. He served until retirement in 1982.
He was a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (F.I.C.E., UK), a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland (F.I.E.I.), and a Member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (I.T.E., US).
He is survived by two sons: Brian, a civil engineer (IRF Fellow 1976/7 - Sultanate of Oman, Purdue University), and Martin, an architect.