Wave of tributes to servant of city

The retired dentist died on Wednesday in aged care.

He served the city council from 1980 to 2004, including a three-year mayoral term from 1989 and a fourth term in 1999-2000.

Dr Langford was keen to develop the Albury airport and in the 1980s was instrumental with former federal Minister Wal Fife in securing Commonwealth funding for a modern terminal, paved runway and control tower.

He convinced the council to introduce fluoride in 1982 and chaired the committee that oversaw a multi-million flood mitigation scheme.

He famously drank a glass of water from the Horseshoe Lagoon after boasting to The Border Mail that a new sewage treatment system he supported had produced "water so pure you could drink it".

Albury mayor Kevin Mack said after joining council he regularly visited the Murray Gardens estate at happy hour on a Thursday night and listened to Dr Langford and another former civic leader Arch McLeish.

"We all became firm friends and I now am saddened by the passing of another of Albury's great characters and loyal servants," Cr Mack said.

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"Moreover our shared passion for Albury and our friendship will be something I will treasure beyond my time on council."

Former mayor Amanda Duncan Strelec said Dr Langford had been a mentor with council procedure when she was first elected.

She described him as a "charming, affable and very intelligent gentleman".

"He was very pro-Albury and I remember when the library-museum opened and I was mayor I insisted on opening it together with the former mayors and I know it meant an awful lot to Les," Ms Duncan Strelec said.

Dr Langford was born in Melbourne, a grandson of a leading builder, Clements Langford, who erected St Paul's Cathedral's spires.

At Melbourne Grammar School, a classmate was the future prime minister, Malcolm Fraser.

Graduating in dentistry from Melbourne University, Dr Langford joined the Corowa dental practice of Edgar Meldrum, whose daughter, June, he married in 1957.

In his life story, Making Waves, printed in 2020, he told of a "two-year honeymoon" about Britain and Europe with work and travel.

Buying an Albury practice about 1960, he became friends with another dentist, Norman Douglas and they shared the joys of sailing, fishing and snow skiing.

Dr Langford became commodore of the Albury-Wodonga Yacht Club and vice-president of the Albury Ski Club.

In 1991, against some opposition, he was the first mayor in Australia to give local Vietnam Veterans the Freedom of the City, and saluted a march in Dean Street led by Normie Rowe.

Mrs Langford died in 2015.

Dr Langford is survived by their two sons, Paul and Mark, and three grandsons.

His funeral will be at Albury's St Matthew's Anglican Church on December 14.

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