My father, Norman Woods, who has died aged 82, was a dedicated public servant in education and health.
Born in Northampton, Norman left school in 1945 at the age of 14. He began his working life as a junior clerk at the town's St Edmund's hospital and while in his second job, as a clerk at a local tuberculosis hospital, he witnessed the birth of the NHS.
Norman completed two professional qualifications in his spare time and, while working at the Co-operative Bank, started teaching banking at Northampton College of Technology in the evenings, becoming a full-time lecturer in 1962. He completed his teacher training and studied, again in his spare time, for a degree in law – achieving a first while juggling the demands of teaching and a young family.
In 1968, after moving to Nottingham, Norman became a senior lecturer in law at the Nottingham Regional College of Technology (now Nottingham Trent University). The following year the Open University was established. Excited by this bold new venture in adult education, Norman applied to become OU regional director of the East Midlands.
Initially from his home, and from January 1970 with a newly appointed staff of two, Norman served as regional director for the next 23 years. He was an ardent supporter of the university's overseas consultancy programme and, as well as advising the open universities of Pakistan and Sri Lanka on their regional organisation, he received more than 1,000 overseas visitors in the East Midlands from embryonic distance-teaching institutions.
He was active in the development of the university's early management training, tutoring many of the courses and directing the residential schools. His love of learning undiminished, he enrolled in the university's MBA programme and graduated in the first cohort in 1991, aged 60.
On his retirement from the OU he returned to the health sector, as chairman of Derby City General hospital NHS trust. He served as chairman for six years, seeing a new children's hospital built on the site and having the pleasure of welcoming the Queen to formally open it in 1997.
Norman is survived by his wife, Mollie, whom he married in 1956; by me and my sister, Annette; and by three grandchildren, David, Elisabeth and Stephanie.