Dick Aldridge was a surgeon in Wellington, New Zealand. He was born in Auckland on 18 June 1930. He was educated at Palmerston North Boys High School, where he was dux of the school. He attended Victoria University College and qualified from Otago Medical School in 1953. He was a house surgeon in Wellington and Stratford Hospital, returning to Wellington as orthopaedic registrar and junior surgical registrar in 1957. In 1958, with his young family, he came to England. He took the Edinburgh fellowship and became surgical registrar at Barnet General Hospital, and later at University College Hospital, passing his FRCS in 1959. He returned to New Zealand with his first wife, Margaret, daughters, Victoria and Jane and son, Richard, and was appointed casualty surgeon and admitting officer at Wellington Hospital. This was followed by two years as surgical tutor in the Wellington Clinical School and then he became full-time surgeon in paediatric and general surgery. From 1970 to 1989 he was on the visiting staff of Wellington Hospital, which he combined with a busy private practice. He was a keen territorial soldier, having joined as a student, and was the commanding officer of the Second General Hospital from 1968 to 1970. A keen skier and golfer, he was registrar of the Court of Examiners of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons from 1968 to 1970. He took early retirement in 1989, but continued to play bowls, despite ischaemic heart disease and became president of the Karori Bowling Club. Pottery was a new found pleasure in retirement and friends commented on his artistic skills. Dick married Joan Curle, theatre supervisor at Wellington Hospital, in 1974: they had one daughter, Robyn, who became a doctor. He died suddenly on 27 July 1999, while attending his pottery class.