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\centerline{\bf Catherine Mary Booth}
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Cathy Booth died on July 27th, 1991. She had known that
she had cancer of the kidneys for just about a year. She
had undergone a major operation last summer, but sadly it
appears that the extensive surgery performed at that time
was too late to control the cancer. Nevertheless, for the
last year she fought the disease consistently,
cheeerfully  and resolutely. She was determined that she
should not be treated any differently, despite the gradual
decline in mobility and energy which ensued. Her
undiminished enthusiasm was evident to those who met her
at last year's TUG conference at Cork last September, and
at the various meetings she continued to attend until her
second major operation earlier this year. But between
those two events she pursued an active social
life, with at least two skiing trips (although
she was unable to ski by the second). Ultimately she was
confined to a wheel chair and moved into a hospice at
Tiverton, near her Exeter home, in the hope that her house
would be modified to allow her to return to it and
continue her life normally. However, this was not to be,
and she was to die at the hospice, with most of her close
family at her bedside. Mercifully she died both peacefully
and gracefully.\looseness1

Cathy was born on June 19th, 1952. She attended Exeter
University, where she completed a BSc in Geography. She
clearly fell in love with Exeter, and spent the rest of
her life in and around it. She spent some time after
University working on Exmoor, and later had her own
business as a furniture restorer. But in 1984, after a
period in hospital, where she began to do some computing,
she started a post as Computing Development Officer back at
Exeter University. One of her first responsibilities was
\TeX. She attended the IUSC conference on Typography and
Design Methods for Computer Typesetting held at Oxford
University at Easter 1985.  Following that meeting, she
attended a \TeX\ course held at Imperial College. Her
involvement and concern with \TeX, and more generally with
Electronic Publishing grew consistently from that time. 

She attended many of the \TeX\ conferences in Europe (in
Strasbourg, Karlsruhe and Cork), as well as TUG meetings
in North America (in Montreal and Stanford), and
some of the GUTenberg meetings in Paris. But it will be
the \TeX88 conference held at Exeter University with
which she may be best remembered to many in the \TeX\
world. Cathy was the local organiser for this meeting: the
huge success of the meeting must be atrributed in no small
way to her vivacity and personal magnetism. But this is to
underestimate the huge attention to detail which she
undertook in the months running up to the conference. This
ensured the smooth running of the events: in particular,
the affectionately remembered excursion from Exeter to
Totnes which included a steam train and a river cruiser.

Cathy was  an excellent teacher of \TeX. She taught a
number of TUG courses on Beginning and Intermediate \TeX,
and other \TeX\ courses at Exeter University. At the
University, she also developed courses which united her
skill with \TeX\ and her design abilities. This facility
with design was just one side of more general artistic
skills. This manifested itself more recently when she
completed an Art History course, for which the results
had appeared only a few days before she died.
Characteristically, her exam results were excellent.

Besides her other activities in \TeX\ and Electronic
Publishing, she had been a member of the UK \TeX\ Users
Group committee since the foundation of the group, as
well as a member of the committee of the BCS Electronic
Publishing Specialist Group. Those of us lucky enough to
be on those committees with her will recall her
very real contribution to the work of these groups. Again
her range of innovative ideas, coupled with her down to
earth attention to detail made a significant improvement
to all that was achieved by those bodies.

We have lost one of the best. \strut
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\line{\hfill\vbox{\hsize0.65\hsize\noindent
It has been proposed that a memorial
fund be set up in memory of Cathy. The first rather
tentative ideas are that this fund would help to
perpetuate her memory by being available to support  \TeX\
projects. The legal aspects are currently being
explored. I hope that many of Cathy's friends and
colleagues will be eager to contribute to this and will
ensure that this proposed memorial truly reflects the
place that she occupied in the whole
community.\author{Malcolm Clark}}\hfill}  
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