Page 31 - She's One Crazy Lady!

“aged just 14, not wanting a life down the mines like
his father, he courageously left the Valleys for the bright lights of London.
”
great deal of counselling and support and was taken off flying duties. I can only imagine the guilt he felt – and the pain of such a loss. At this point in time, he was newly married to Mum, and she must have been an absolute tower of strength. Dad’s Wing Commander asked Mum if she knew what she was taking on. She knew. For “better or for worse”, she said. Dad’s recovery was long and hard – he never got over it and didn’t talk about it but kept the photo of him with his crew close by him, always.
He and Mum had met at a dance at Wicksteed Park and married in 1944 after a short romance of just four months. Mum was Dad’s rock and four children later, worked alongside him to provide a comfortable life for us all. It was not easy. Dad was a worker and strove to better himself to provide for us – he was ambitious. To this day I will always hold him in high esteem for his, and Mum’s, work ethics – even if we did moan about them! I feel proud of his drive and his achievements knowing that he started with nothing, had setbacks and strove to do the very best he could for us all.
Dad was a very talented sportsman and played competitive cricket, football and golf. It was so sad when, in his mid-sixties, he made an impulsive decision to retire, almost overnight, to devote more time for his passion of gardening and growing and exhibiting fuchsias. He and Mum retired back to Barton Seagrave and Dad spent his days working on his showpiece garden, which he often opened to the public for charity and became his private world and his refuge. Not long after he retired, came his clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. We called it the ‘long goodbye’ – we’d lost the Dad we knew and loved many years
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