My mother, Rosamund Comins, who has died aged 99, was a voice teacher for nearly 70 years. In 1993 she founded the Voice Care Network, a non-profit training organisation, which assists those whose work requires them to speak for long periods and who may experience strain or damage as a result.
She was appointed OBE in 2013. She ran her final voice workshop when she was 88; it was for trainee teachers in Birmingham.
In the mid-1950s, Roz moved with her husband, David Comins, from London to the Midlands, where she lectured at Coventry Technical College for 30 years. She introduced generations of students to the delights and challenges of theatre, while preparing others for English Speaking Board (ESB) exams, with which she was involved for 40 years, as a teacher, examiner and, latterly, board member. She also ran adult evening classes – her innovative approaches included using Tibetan chanting and the Alexander technique to help people improve voice control.
Assisting speech and language therapists treating teachers with damaged voices in the 1980s gave Roz the impetus to found the Voice Care Network. After leaving Coventry Tech in 1989, she contributed her knowledge to tribunals recognising voice impairment as an occupational injury.
Her dynamism secured intellectual and financial sponsorship for the VCN, which helped embed voice care into training for teachers and call centre workers, among others. My father supported her in setting up and running the organisation.
In 1997, she worked as a voice consultant for Teletubbies and was awarded a University of Warwick BPhil in education for her dissertation on voice training and education.
Roz was born in Enfield, north London, to Dorothy (nee Midworth) and Stanley Dorey. Stanley, an apprentice marine engineer in Chatham dockyard, ended his career as chief engineer surveyor for Lloyd’s Register of Shipping.
After attending Princess Helena college near Hitchin, Hertfordshire, Roz trained at Central School of Speech & Drama in London from 1944 to 1947. She taught for two years in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, then returned to Hertfordshire as a freelance voice and drama teacher and to care for Dorothy following a late cancer diagnosis. She moved to Kensington, central London, with her father and was his companion for several years.
My parents met in the winter of 1951 at a dance and they married in 1955. By this time, David had completed his economics degree at University College London and taken a job with a toolmaking company in Coventry.
My parents spent their entire married life in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. David died in 2011. My mother was still doing pilates at 92 and lived in our family home until she was 96.
She is survived by her children, Matthew, Beatrice and me, and eight grandchildren.
