Our thirty-first President was the youngest President ever to be elected to the office. Even at the time of writing, nearly twenty years later, he has only celebrated his birthday 13 times. All our readers astute enough to have deduced from this fact that Fred was a leap year baby are well qualified to join the Society's Quiz Team. Born in Edinburgh on 29th February 1908, he came to Brazil in 1951 and joined Sao Paulo Alpargatas the following year in which concern he held the post of Chief Engineer for twenty years. He still active, specialising in machinery development for the Company.

Vice-President in 1960, President the following year, and ex-oficio committee member the year after constitutes Fred's official service record for the Society but his regular support for all our functions could be relied on for many years and his term of office was a period during which a number of innovations were introduced.

Special Scottish dancing classes for beginners were started, the get-togethers were re-vitalised, the venue of the picnic was changed from SPAC Pirituba to St Paul's School playing fields. In an attempt to modify the form of the Ladies Night which had become somewhat stereotyped and commonplace, it was held on the premises of Linhas’ (now Coats Corrente) factory at Ipiranga (and a most unusual and successful evening it was) , the overlong toast list at the Annual Banquet was trimmed and, lastly, the Annual General Meeting was held at SPAC on Burn’s Night with the Lassies joining in afterwards for a High Tea and a dance. Quite a memorable year.

Since his wife's death, Fred has lived very quietly pursuing his main hobby of studies on the pioneers of engineering in Britain, reading history, and enjoying the company of his daughters and the out-door life at his weekend "sitio" just outside São Paulo.