Obituary taken from 'Dignity Memorial':

Maurice K. Isaac was born to Kenneth and Noreen Isaac in Bristol, England. He attended Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital, a boy’s boarding school founded in 1586, and still retaining many of the traditions of the old-fashioned British public school system. His experiences at QEH would shape his attitudes and interests for the rest of his life.
 

Maurice studied Chemistry and Physics at the University of Birmingham before traveling to South Africa in 1965 to work on a seismic crew for two years. When he returned to the UK, he continued his studies at Birmingham, earning his MSc in Geophysics, preparing him for a profession that combined his skill in physics with his love of the outdoors. Upon graduation, he accepted a job with Chevron Oil, and immigrated to the United States in 1968 to take up a position with them in Houston, Texas.
 

Maurice was soon transferred to San Francisco, California, where he met the love of his life Nola May Carter, and was married on June 10, 1974. After several happy years in the Bay Area, and a brief year back in London, Maurice and family returned to Houston in 1985 to make their permanent home there. After early retirement in 1998, Maurice struggled to reinvent himself, taking up bird watching, rugby enthusiasm, and hiking large segments of the Appalachian trail. His wife’s untimely death from lung cancer in 2003 forced him to radically rethink his plans and priorities.
 

Over the next 17 years, Maurice immersed himself in the arts, avidly supporting the local Houston opera and baroque music communities and singing regularly in the choir at St. Martin’s. He went on extended walking tours of the British countryside, and hosted many anglophile-themed dinner parties back in Houston. He fervently pursued a late-blooming passion for poetry, both reading other poets aloud and writing his own verse, resulting in the self-publication of five books of original poetry in collaboration with his son Matthew.

In addition to his parents, Maurice was preceded in death by his wife of 29 years, Nola Carter Isaac, on June 29, 2003, and his sister Kathleen, on September 7, 2011. He is survived by his two sons, Alistair M. C. Isaac and Matthew E. Isaac, and his granddaughter, Aurelie Wren Isaac-Wolff.
 

In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to Houston Hospice, 1905 Holcombe Blvd., Houston TX 77030-4123.