{"id":101983,"date":"2023-04-27T14:14:58","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T13:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/?p=101983"},"modified":"2023-04-27T14:14:59","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T13:14:59","slug":"obituary-celebrating-the-life-of-seiko-and-citizen-veteran-ralph-bembridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/obituary-celebrating-the-life-of-seiko-and-citizen-veteran-ralph-bembridge\/","title":{"rendered":"OBITUARY: Celebrating the life of Seiko and Citizen veteran Ralph Bembridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ralph Bembridge, who will be remembered by watch industry veterans as sales manager at Seiko for a decade then general manager of Citizen Watches, has passed away.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ralph was born in 1930 in East Ardsley, Yorkshire.<\/p>\n

He left school aged 16 to work first as an office assistant before finding his calling in life in sales roles.<\/p>\n

Firstly though he had to complete his National Service. He joined the RAF and became a sergeant and physical training instructor.<\/p>\n

A keen body builder, keeping fit and strong was important to him all his life and as a young man he won several body building competitions.<\/p>\n

When he came home to civilian life Ralph became a salesman and worked for a variety of companies across Yorkshire before going to work at Ronson, a US lighter company.<\/p>\n

In 1966 Ralph met his future wife Jean at a caravan park in Scarborough, although it took them 14 years before getting married in\u00a0 1980 and Ralph became a father figure to two step children, Helen & Mark Toulson (who many of you will know as the head watch buyer at The Watches of Switzerland Group).<\/p>\n

Ralph moved south to work for Seiko Watches, where he spent ten years, rising to become sales manager.<\/p>\n

He then moved to Citizen Watches as General Manager through to his retirement.<\/p>\n

Friends and family say Ralph and Jean loved to spend all their time together, they enjoyed photography and travelling but most of all they just enjoyed being together.<\/p>\n

Ralph was larger than life, he never did anything quietly and always attracted attention particularly in his younger days – his whistling, his love of convertible cars and motorbikes were a big part of what made Ralph Ralph.<\/p>\n

He passed peacefully on March 6 and is very much missed by his family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ralph Bembridge, who will be remembered by watch industry veterans as sales manager at Seiko for a decade then general manager of Citizen Watches, has passed away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":101984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[6062],"newspack_lstngs_evt":[],"newspack_lstngs_gen":[],"newspack_lstngs_mkt":[],"newspack_lstngs_plc":[],"acf":[],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"WATCHPRO","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101983"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101983"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101987,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101983\/revisions\/101987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101983"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_evt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_evt?post=101983"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_gen","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_gen?post=101983"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_mkt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_mkt?post=101983"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_plc","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_plc?post=101983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}