A WELL-known retired Royal Naval commander, from Kingsley Green, near Haslemere, has died.

Commander Thomas Keith Evans died on June 26, aged 98.

Known for “the importance of making the very most of life” Commander Evans played a proactive part in the local community where he had lived for just over 60 years.

Involved with the campaign to keep the town’s hospital services, he was also a prominent figure in the lowering of the speed limit on the A286 through Kingsley Green after several fatalities in the noughties, writing several letters to The Herald calling for a change in the law.

A former pupil of Pangbourne College and thought to be the oldest Old Pangbournian, until his death, Cdr Evans played golf throughout his life and was a long-standing member of Liphook Golf Club, often playing for his old boys golf society.

In 2002, aged 82, he won the Public Schools Foursomes Championship at Liphook playing with fellow OP and Liphook member Charlie Parry.

His second wife Heather also enjoyed the game as a scratch golfer.

A member of St Margaret’s Church Fernhurst, Cdr Evans was a familiar figure at the annual village Remembrance Day services, where he recited the exhortation and laid a wreath on behalf of the Royal Navy.

He was a past president of Fernhurst Cricket Club and donated a prize that is awarded annually.

He was also an honorary life member.

A past governor of Haslemere’s The Royal School, in 2016 he was granted the Freedom of the City of London.

Cdr Evans was chairman of the HMS Hood Association from 2014-17, and a “tireless supporter of the association as well as all things Royal Navy”.

A spokesman for the association said: “He was greatly loved and respected and he will be very sorely missed.”

His elder son Michael told The Herald his father would be remembered as someone who was “always willing to perform at task if that task needed to be done”.

Born in 1919, Cdr Evans came from the Wirral.

His father owned a pharmaceutical business in the north west of England but died suddenly in 1921 leaving him to be brought up by his mother.

He entered the nautical college in 1933 and lined the funeral route in London for six-and-a-half hours in cold, damp weather when King George V died in 1936. Cdr Evans joined the Royal Navy as a paymaster cadet in 1937.

He was posted to HMS Hood at the start of 1938 as the most junior officer on board and spent a year in what was regarded at the time as the mightiest ship in the Royal Navy.

His naval career included a number of overseas postings and he was in Durban, South Africa on the day of the Hood’s sinking by the German warship Bismark, in May 1941, with just three survivors from the 1,400-strong crew.

Announced over a naval tannoy at a wharf side, Cdr Evans said: “Everyone just stood still. We didn’t believe it. I’m not a bit ashamed to say that I cried.”

War service in Columbo, now Sri Lanka followed and a brush with royalty, when 70 years after serving as captain’s secretary to Philip Mountbatten at the shore establishment HMS Royal Arthur, Cdr Evans proudly showed The Duke of Edinburgh a pencilled letter of thanks he had received from him dating back to when the young prince and the then Princess Elizabeth had attended the college’s centenary celebrations.

Back in England at the former signals school – HMS Mercury, in East Meon, near Petersfield – Keith met his first wife Francis, a Wren and was married in 1943.

Their two sons, Michael and Nicholas, were born in 1950 and 1959 respectively.

His first wife died in 1966.

Following further appointments across the world, Cdr Evans retired from the Navy in 1969.

He took up an appointment with the Guildford-based voluntary service group now run by Surrey County Council for the next 15 years, before finally retiring in 1984.

During this time, he met his second wife Heather and the couple married in 1979.

Cdr Evans leaves his wife Heather and two sons.

The funeral takes place at St Margaret’s Church, Fernhurst, at 2pm on Friday, July 27, with a memorial service takiing place at Pangbourne College, at midday, on Tuesday, September 18.