John Alan William McKelvey was a consultant ophthalmologist for the Cornwall Hospitals Trust. He was born in 1932 into a farming family in Northern Ireland. He studied medicine at Queen's University, Belfast, qualifying in 1955. He held junior hospital posts at Belfast City Hospital, and in 1957

Born at Llanfairpwll, Anglesey, on 6 December 1926, the son of Leslie William Jones MRCS, a general practitioner, and Prudence Mary, née Snelling, he was of the fourth generation in his family to become a doctor. He was educated at the Llanfairpwll Elementary School, Hillgrove School, Bangor, Epsom