Colin Redfern

Colin Redfern

Born in England in 1938 to Kenneth and Marjory Redfern, Colin spent most of his childhood on the south coast of Sussex, together with his sister Jo and brother Richard. He was educated at Cranleigh School in Surrey, where his study of classical music gave way to what was to become a lifelong love of jazz. After playing piano and alto saxophone for two years in the Royal Marines Band Service he embarked on a musical career that took him first to France and the Channel
Islands, eventually landing him in 1964 on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas. There he played piano at the Treasure Cay resort for the next eighteen years, and on one lucky day he met
Janet, the daughter of his friends George and DD May from Edina, Minnesota. Colin and Janet married in 1980 and spent 40 very happy years together. In 1982 they moved to Boca Raton,
Florida, and for the next twenty-five years Colin continued his musical career in Florida, mostly playing the piano in groups varying in size from duos to big bands. His work also took him to the Big Island of Hawaii on three different occasions and to engagements in Canada and the
Caribbean. During his time at Treasure Cay Colin had developed an interest in seashells and
the mollusks that create them, and this eventually led to the publication of two reference books, "Bahamian Seashells: a Thousand Species from Abaco, Bahamas" in 2001 and "Bahamian
Seashells: 1161 Species from Abaco, Bahamas" in 2013. He also co-authored several
malacological papers and had ten new species and one new genus named for him. In 2014
Oolin donated his collection to the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum on Sanibel Island, Florida. In 2016 he was invited to join a six-week expedition organized by the French National Museum of Natural History, studying marine biodiversity in the waters surrounding the
Caribbean island of Martinique. Colin loved his wife Janet, his family in England, cats and dogs, malacology, jazz, hot weather, the ocean, wine and gardening. Happily atheistic since early
adulthood, Colin had Janet's promise that there would be no services for him when he died, and that his ashes would be scattered in the ocean. Colin died on January 25, 2019 ..