A WELL-KNOWN local man who annually organised a reunion for Castle Hill School has died.

Barry Hynes, who was aged 76, did not recovered from an operation he underwent in the Manchester Royal Infirmary and lost his fight for life on July 9.

He was known to many as ‘Barry T-shirt’ because of his hobby creating slogan T-shirts, as well as pens and diaries. Barry, who had been married to Carol for almost 49 years, worked at Dobson and Barlow as a fitting engineer and met Carol when he was working for the Bolton firm in her home town of Derby.

He was always keen to help others and used to thoroughly enjoy organising the Castle Hill reunion events each year, said Carol.

Over the years, the events became more and more popular, with extra people joining the get-together each year.

As he prepared for one of his reunions in a recent edition of Looking Back, Barry told us of “gentle lovely times” he enjoyed in the Hall i’th’ Wood area with his parents, Annie and Jimmy, and his sister, Pat Hornby, who survives him and was also a keen member of the reunion group.

Although he was working on this year’s get-together, he had handed over the reins for the early organisation of it to a friend and had planned to get involved again when he got over his operation.

“He thought he would be out of hospital in a fortnight but sadly that didn’t happen,” explained Carol.

Barry’s funeral was held last Friday. He was a father of two, grandfather of seven and great grandfather of two youngsters and a devoted family man.