Graham was born
in Rochdale in 1934 and always remained a proud Lancashire Lad. He was the youngest of three children. Muriel, the older sister, died some years ago
but Margaret, who still lives in Rochdale, is here with us. She has always had
a special ability, as required, to cheer Graham up and make him laugh, even in
recent times.
Graham left technical
school at 15 to take up a graphic design apprenticeship. Like many of his
generation, being denied a longer period of education made him determined to
provide it for his children, all of whom went to university. It also spurred him on to read extensively
and deeply in history and English literature, and all Anthony Trollope’s novels
were on the Kindle that he used until its buttons were no longer manageable.
In 1952 he was
called up for National Service, and for him, as for so many, this was a
life-changing and life-enhancing experience.
The boy from Rochdale found himself successively in Egypt and Cyprus,
meeting the challenges of making new friends or at least rubbing along with all
sorts of people, and coping with a system where his superiors demanded
unquestioning obedience. He wasn’t the sort to find that easy – hence, in later
life, the number of letters he wrote to newspapers and other bodies. His army
experiences were important in two other ways in particular: he entered service
as a fairly skinny teenage boy and emerged as a fit, muscular man who was devoted
to various sporting activities for the rest of his life. Also, he had a cheap camera with which he
documented his experiences whenever he could afford film, and he came out of
the army knowing that he had an eye for a good picture and determined to make a
living as a photographer.
Back in
Rochdale, he found work with a firm of studio photographers, and fell in love
with Joan, whose husband Brian had died in an RAF accident, leaving her with
two children, Elizabeth and Paul, aged 3 and 1. Their marriage two years later
was understandably difficult for members of Brian’s family. But, as time passed, and the love that Joan and
Graham had for each other and that Graham had for the children became evident,
then acceptance did occur. This acceptance quickly deepened into mutual
affection and love.
After Joan’s death,
Graham told my wife Elizabeth that he would not have married Joan had he not
known that he could love her two children properly – which he absolutely
did. As there are now step-parents and step-children
in the next two generations of the family, we feel we have learned a lot from
Graham’s example. Helene, the daughter born to Joan and Graham a year later,
completed their family.
A nice aside: at the wedding
Paul, too young to remember his natural father, turned to Joan’s life-long
friend Pat, who was minding him and Elizabeth, and said: ‘I’m very happy. I’m
getting a daddy today.’
Four years after Helene’s birth,
Joan and Graham took the opportunity of a £10 Pom passage (the assisted
immigration scheme) to take their family to live in New Zealand, choosing
Christchurch on the South Island as they didn’t want to join the larger ex-pat
community on the North Island. Graham had secured a job in a photographic studio
and Joan trained as a teacher. New Zealand fitted Graham like a glove. The
adventurous, practical outlook of New Zealanders meant that his sporting enthusiasms
and love of expeditions and camping fitted in well, albeit on a shoestring as
money was tight. His children still remember long walks in the bush and
Graham’s sometimes unjustified confidence in his navigational skills.
In his active life-style Graham
did not always have the unquestioning support of his family. Joan loved the
open countryside but preferred to shelter from the sun, and Liz remembers some
of her teenage rebellion being focussed on stopping going with Graham to
early-morning weekend swimming sessions.
Her dad didn’t hold this against her, no more than he expressed any
disappointment in Paul not sharing his enthusiasm for soccer – after his own
amateur career Graham coached a spectacularly unsuccessful Topsham team for a
few years. This was the team which progressed from many double-digit defeats to
a single glorious draw, but never won. Graham believed in a very direct style
of play – years later I totally failed to convince him of the value of an
occasional back pass when sitting with him as he shouted at the television
during European matches.
As the young Paul didn’t take to
football, Graham unselfishly adopted his son’s enthusiasm to the extent of
successfully building with Paul a plywood dinghy from a kit. This was the son
who would subsequently sail his boat (a bigger one, of course) in a gale across
the Bay of Biscay to Spain.
A practical, outdoor life was
what Graham wanted and speedos or shorts were his attire of choice – he even tried
shorts years later at County Hall in Exeter – but his boss didn’t approve. The
only thing that didn’t work out for Graham was a brief foray into glamour
photography. When Helene helped him a couple of years ago to put together an
illustrated talk about his life as a photographer, he revealed that the only
such studio session he attempted made him so nervous and uncomfortable that he
almost had a breakdown.
Six years later, Graham’s father
became very ill back in England, and money wouldn’t stretch to allow for a
there-and-back visit. After a family conference, and with Elizabeth interested
in attending university in the UK, it was decided that they should leave New
Zealand and head back. After a short stay back in Rochdale and following
Graham’s father’s death, they decided to move to Devon (as close to a New
Zealand lifestyle as you can get in the UK?)
After a short spell living in a caravan (a bit cramped for 5 – Paul
slept in the bath) they rented for a while in Exton before moving to Tops-ham
(not, Graham would repeatedly correct me, Top-sham). For a while Graham worked
as an insurance salesman – a job he hated and at which he was hopeless – the
only saving grace of this whole episode being his meeting with Colin Hickmott
which led to a lifelong friendship with him and Thelma – indeed it was on
Thelma’s recommendation that Graham eventually moved to Langford Park Nursing
Home.
After several years with a
photography business in Exeter, Graham became the official county photographer
for Devon, a job which suited him down to the ground. He engaged cheerfully and easily with a wide
range of people (was there ever a more natural extrovert?) and drew on his wide
experience as a technical and landscape photographer when the assignments demanded. He took truly beautiful photographs of the
then new M5 viaduct over the Exe estuary, catalogued a succession of Lord
Mayors in their regalia, and had no trouble with Miss Devon as she kept all her
clothes on.
Outside work, he became a key
member of the Topsham community, and is especially associated in many people’s
memories with the planning, funding and building of Topsham Outdoor Pool. He loved Topsham and made some lifelong
friends there. He joined in gamely with
everything, particularly if showmanship was involved, as in refereeing the Mud
Football game.
We have been very moved to see
the number and nature of Facebook responses to the Pool’s announcement of
Graham’s death. This is the very positive side of social media. With his
daughter’s help, Graham wrote his account of the building of the pool 18 months
ago for publication in the Estuary magazine. I particularly liked his memory of
local junior school children, invited to the official opening of the pool,
being singularly unimpressed by Graham’s efforts to fill it in front of them
with a garden hose from an ordinary tap.
He knew when he was beaten, and called in the Fire Brigade.
At the Pool he was one of the
original Nutters, the early morning swimmers. We think the name suited.
Graham was generally good at
making things, and he and Joan had always found that they could be particularly
happy when sharing a project, usually the purchase and upgrading of a
house. In his mid-fifties Graham took
early retirement from Devon County Council and he and Joan embarked on a grand
round-the- world tour – they travelled east, returning along the way to New
Zealand and spending time with Brian’s family in Tasmania as well as visiting
Muriel in New England. Liz’s children remember the excitement of plotting where
their grandparents were as they crossed the map of the world and postcards from
everywhere came through the letterbox.
When they returned they began the search
for a new house. In Clyst St George they
bought Church House which needed extensive rebuilding, so much so that for
months they had only a ladder connecting the ground floor and their upstairs
bedroom. Graham’s mother had moved to
Topsham before Graham’s retirement and after a few years was beginning to
struggle. So, pooling their resources, they bought into Pytte House, a grand
property in Clyst St George which had been divided years earlier into 6 homes,
each full of character. Here they
increasingly cared for May, helped in the summer months by Muriel who came over
each year from her home in the United States.
These were on the whole very happy years – the house was often buzzing
with visitors – children and grandchildren, nephews and nieces on Devon
holidays – and all the Pytte House residents got on extremely well. Number One had a great open plan kitchen /
living space long before such things became popular and here different
generations would work and chat together and conjure up amazing meals. It was
at one of these that Graham’s coughing fit inspired the comment from his
step-grandson Hugh which appears on today’s order of service.
