I'll get all these wishes sent to their children.
R.I.P. from HDRCGB.
From The Times
April 3, 2008
Doctors riding Harley-Davidsons killed in crash on family holiday 
Two highly regarded British doctors have been killed on a family holiday in Florida after a truck hit their Harley-Davidson motorcycle on a popular biker route near Daytona Beach.
Friends and colleagues paid tribute yesterday to the couple, Dr Walter Rhoden, a senior heart specialist at Barnsley General Hospital, and Dr Kathryn Phipps, a GP who helped to train doctors in south Yorkshire.
The couple, who were both motorcycle enthusiasts, were on holiday with their three children, Jamie, Emily and Oliver, when a Nissan Frontier pulled across into their pathway, causing the fatal collision. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.
Charges are pending against the Nissan driver, Daniel Couse Jr, according to the Florida Highway Patrol, which is treating the case as a traffic homicide investigation.
It is understood that the children, aged 12 to 17, were staying at the family timeshare in Orange Lake Resort, Orlando, at the time of the crash on Sunday afternoon.
Friends told
The Times that Dr Rhoden, 47, had sold his TVR sports car about a year ago to buy himself the Harley-Davidson. Dr Phipps, 45, who was riding as his pillion passenger, had been planning to get her own motorcycle licence on their return.
Yesterday there were tributes from fellow medics and former students praising the well-loved GP “with the wildly-coloured hair, infectious enthusiasm and ability to shop” and the “superb cardiologist” with a dry sense of humour.
Mark Atkin, a senior partner at Valley Medical Centre, Sheffield, where Dr Rhoden ran a cardiology clinic for ten years, said: “Walter was very old-fashioned in that if somebody had a problem, he would pursue it until the very end, and make sure it would get completed. He cared.” Dr Atkin said that the couple would be remembered for their outgoing personalities: “They were larger than life, and the manner in which they died in a way shows how they lived life to the full,” Colleagues at Barnsley General Hospital said Dr Rhoden was “an absolutely fabulous man”.
The children are believed to have flown back to England on Monday, and are being cared for by extended family and their long-term nanny.