My father, Jack Aaronson, who has died aged 97, spent three decades as a principled and successful “company doctor”, helping to rescue failing manufacturing companies, as well as organisations such as Bonhams, the fine art auctioneers, and the Greyhound Racing Association. He salvaged many jobs and livelihoods in the process, including, in the late 1960s, those of 700 redundant miners and steelworkers in County Durham who were retrained as engineers to build vehicle bodies for a failing company he had relocated from London.
Jack was born into an Orthodox Jewish household in the East End of London, to Samuel, an importer and exporter, and Sara (nee Chaikhin), a housewife. All his grandparents had come to England to escape persecution in imperial Russia; on Samuel’s side from Latvia, and on Sara’s side from Ukraine, via Palestine. Jack’s childhood was marred by his parents’ separation and his father’s return to Palestine. Sara struggled to bring up her seven children, who were often farmed out to other families, but this failed to dent Jack’s incorrigibly extrovert character and positive outlook on life.
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