A SKIPTON man who fought as a paratrooper in World War Two, brought electricity to the Dales and founded Skipton Town Football Club has died aged 90.

Jack Lockwood, the son of a train driver, lived on Back Water Street and was educated at Parish Church School.

Conscripted at the age of 18, he volunteered for the Parachute Regiment and took part in the Rhine Crossing in the 6th Airborne regiment in early 1945.

Sixty years later he returned as part of the 'Heroes Return' programme and visited the farm where his parachute landed. The same family lived there and showed him the bullet marks left from the fierce fighting.

He took part in the capture of Wuntsdorf Airfield near Hanover, now a German air force base. It was near here that his close friend was blown up by a booby trap. The body landed in the garden of a house and when Jack returned to the site, the owner revealed he had been an eight-year-old boy and witnessed the ambush.

Jack’s friend's body had been buried by the German family where it landed until, some 25 years later, it was moved to the Becklingen War Graves Commission cemetery.

Jack made an emotional trip to pay his respects and also formed a firm friendship with the German family who had buried his pal.

He had a lucky escape at Neustadt when crossing the river Leine. In one of the last actions of the war the bridge was blown up as his company were crossing it. Twenty-two paratroopers were killed but Jack had been assigned to a boat and escaped. He was detailed to bury the bodies in a makeshift grave by the roadside.

His captain was Richard Todd, an actor, who became a film star after the war (he played the main character Guy Gibson in The Dambusters).

When the Armistice came, Jack’s battalion was perhaps the most advanced in the Allied forces, as they raced north to secure the Baltic port of Wismar. They met daily with Soviet forces until, four weeks after the war ended, they were ordered to withdraw some 50 miles as the Allies reached an agreement on the division of Germany.

After the war Jack worked for the Yorkshire Electricity Board, putting up pylons bringing electricity to Wharfedale, starting at Bolton Abbey and working upstream to Oughtershaw and Cam Houses.

He played football for Skipton Methodists but when the players wanted to start a weekly lottery to raise funds the church authorities were unhappy. So Jack and Dick Keighley started Skipton Town, choosing that name because a friendly bank manager advised them that a dormant account with a few pounds in it had been left by a long defunct team of that name.

Eventually the electricity supply was completed and in 1963 Jack moved to a job maintaining the electricity service to the villages of the East Riding.

However he was a frequent visitor to Skipton to see family and friends and loved to check out the electricity poles of the area to see if they were still the originals he had put up.

His son, Ian, was editor of the Craven Herald from 1993 to 2008 and Jack was immensely proud when his grandson, Luke, started playing for Skipton Town.

Jack loved most sports, particularly rugby league, and was relatively healthy, if deaf, until recently.