A lifelong involvement in charity began for David Bishop in 1962 when he joined the Glasgow Jewish Board of Guardians Auxiliary Committee. He brought stars like Frankie Vaughan, Shirley Bassey, Sophie Tucker, Mike and Bernie Winters, Roy Orbison and Sammy Davis Jnr to Glasgow fundraisers which he helped organise.
In 1962, the year of the Beatles, Da vid again brought them to Glasgow for a fundraising show. It was a career that extended beyond Glasgow to Romania and other parts of the world .
David Harry Bishop was born in London, the son of Sybil and Michael Bishop, who moved to County Down, Ireland where his father served in the RAF. After the war he lived in Wood Thorpe, Nottingham and in 1949 he joined his parents and sister Yvette, in the West End of Glasgow, thus describing himself as a ‘West Ender’.
With the death of his father when he was 16, David had to leave school and find employment. He began working in the fruit market, and from there to the wholesalers, Stirlings. In 1958 he went to Hull to learn the wholesale wines and spirits business. He followed in his parents’ footsteps, selling Bishop’s Durban Cream Sherry.
In 1962, having spent much of his youth in the bowling alleys, his skills at 10 pin bowling peaked. He scored the highest score of 288 out of 300 making him a Scottish Champion. In the same year, when he joined the Glasgow Jewish Board of Guardians Auxiliary Committee he met Carol Hyman and they married in 1966. They had four children, Michael, Lucy, Rodney and Lloyd.
David became a befriender with Jewish Care Scotland. He joined the JCS committee and became building convenor, then vice-chairman and latterly vice-president. After he retired, he regularly visited the JCS Walton Community Care Centre in Giffnock.
Together with close friend Max Kramer he helped organise several charitable cycle runs and treks abroad, including a successful JCS Heritage Trek to Latvia and Lithuania in 2011.
In the 1970s David belonged to Kittoch Rotary, in East Kilbride and helped to raise funds for the less privileged, becoming president from 1981 – 1982.
In 1977 he joined the wholesale wines and spirits importer Wm Morton, building it over 25 years into a very successful business , introducing Budweiser, Michelob and the Concho Toro Wines to Scotland. He retired as managing director in June 1998.
David was also very committed to bringing over the Israeli war disabled soldiers to Glasgow in the early 1980s, through fundraising, organising hosts and entertainment. He always gave his home to the last night party.
In 1999 David was asked to help support a small, impoverished community of concentration camp survivors in the Romanian town of Targu Mures. With Ethne Woldman, who had discovered the community and Colin Black, he helped found the Targu Mures Charitable Trust in 2000. He visited the community several times a year and pledged support for them as long as there was a single survivor left. His love for them and their families was unconditional and reciprocated.
Ethne Woldman, who had earlier worked with David as the Jewish Care Scotland chief executive said: “David – gave his heart and soul to the survivors in Targu Mures and was greatly loved and respected there. On his last visit in April, 2018, even though his own health was failing, he insisted on doing things for everyone else – it was David’s way.
“His great sense of humour and fun, kindness and warmth will be greatly missed.” He is survived by his wife Carol, children Michael and Philippa, Lucy and Stephen, Rodney and Laurence, Lloyd and Sarah, grandchildren Gaby, Cara and Olivia, Emily and Joshua, Eyal, Savannah and Dana, and Arlo and Phoebe.
SHARON MAIL
David Bishop: born April 10, 1939. Died June 9, 2019
