Carl Ross - Biography

Biography

Carl (John) Ross was the fourth of six children of Thomas Ross, founder of a fish merchanting firm of the same name. Carl Ross was educated at Culford School (where he was a county hockey player) and served briefly in the Royal Navy before joining the family business in 1918 when he was demobilized. Thomas retired early in 1928 upon which Carl took control and introduced new ideas such as the import of frozen halibut and salmon from North America, resulting in a steady period of expansion after Second World War.

Ross married Elsie Hartley, daughter of a Blackburn cotton salesman in 1928. They had two sons and two daughters. He obtained a pilot's licence and played an active role in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve cadet force during the Second World War. He was president of the Fishing Industry Sports Association and a generous contributor to charity. He was president of the Grimsby Conservative Association for some twenty-five years from 1954.

His grandson is David Ross, the co-founder of the mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse with an estimated wealth of £312m.

Read more about this topic:  Carl Ross

Famous quotes containing the word biography:

    A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.
    Richard Holmes (b. 1945)

    In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)