Granny V's son

My father, for whom I felt the same immense love and admiration that he had for his mother (my post yesterday – I think they have the same smile…). He lived through two world wars, but was too young to fight in the first and too old for the second , when he served in the Home Guard. Just as well, since, as a deeply religious man, he would have been a conscientious objector and suffered for his beliefs as his older brother did (he was paraded through the streets of Bristol on his way to prison with other conscientious objectors, and subjected to all the insults and fury of those who had sent family and friends to the front). His family only learned what had happened him by chance, when a neighbour came running to tell them.

His father had pernicious anemia and was ill for eight years before he died, so his mother supported a family of three on her earnings as a nurse. My father left school at 14 but his fierce desire to learn and to succeed took him to the top of his profession. I truly believe that, in a field not known for its respect for ethics and fair play (selling advertising space), he achieved this without trampling on others or compromising his beliefs.
He lost his first wife to TB, and was already 40 when he met and married my mother. His great concerns were to ensure that she would never suffer the hardships that his mother had known, and that my brother and I should have a good education (his books, in particular his Bible and his Thesaurus, which I have to this day, were his treasured possessions). He never lost his respect for education and awareness of how he had felt the lack of it himself. An even greater desire was for us to share his Christian beliefs , and in that respect, I’m afraid I let him down, which was a lasting sorrow to both of us.

He was a warm and loving man and I treasure his memory. He died a few months before HH and I got engaged – I wish he had known about it, he was very worried that I was ‘no spring chicken’, and anxious for me to stop rocketing around the world with unsuitable people :-)