Tribute to Mary Walker 2nd July 1923 – 21st March 2007 - Age 83 Anecdotes & Happy Memories Just a few humorous and interesting things that happened in her eventful life. Recorded by Geoff Walker (Her Son). Mary’s many Community Roles included:- Licensed Lay Reader – Funerals, Christenings, Helped with Communion, Gave communion to the sick, Readings from the Bible. She once held a double funeral for an elderly Hove Edge married couple. They died within hours of each other. Scout Fellowship Member and loved camping with St Chads Scouts in the Dales. School governor at St Chads Junior School. St Chads Sunday School Assistant. Column writer for the Church Monthly Magazine and Brighouse Echo. Marriage Counsellor. Brighouse Samaritan. Nursed and comforted the sick in their homes. Visited the sick in hospitals. Rehabilitated people from prison and befriended offenders. Charity fund raiser. Make-up assistant at Brighouse Amateur Operatic Society. (Although she never wore makeup herself) School Report 1935 (Age 12) Handicrafts – Would have better results if she talked less in Needlework. However she came 4th out of 29. She left St. Augustines School at 14. A terrible bomb experience In November 1940 (Age 17) she joined the Air Raid Precaution (ARP) Wardens. She lived in Horne Street – Halifax and would tour the nearby streets advising people to blackout, dim lights and pull curtains together. A single german bomb landed in Hanson Lane, Halifax on 22 November 1940 killing 11 people. Mary had a nightmare experience of placing the pub landlord’s severed head in a sack. She knew him.

Even a cabbage has a heart. In 1939 Mary was walking down Pellon Lane to meet a boyfriend in Halifax Town Centre to go to the pictures. He was home on leave from the Navy. On the way she spotted a large fresh cabbage in the middle of the road. She picked it up to examine it and decided she had better put it back down in the road. A policeman watching her said “ Hey what do you think you’re doing? – You can’t leave that cabbage there in the road!.” She pondered, decided to pick it back up and continued with it under her arm. At this time vegetables were war rationed and this cabbage would be a Sunday Lunch treat for her family, the Ashworth Family. She approached a young seaman outside the post office and there he was in his clean pressed uniform. He greeted her with “Mary - why have you got a cabbage under your arm?” She said “I found it on the way and I’ve decided to keep it.” The seaman was not enamoured at all and said “You’re not taking that cabbage into the picture house Mary. It’s either Me or the cabbage!” Mary repied “Right then, It’s the cabbage, I’m off then…” She promptly left, went home and that weekend cooked the cabbage with sunday dinner. Years later she entered a writing competition in a popular ladies magazine. She wrote about the cabbage and chose the title for the entry ‘Even a cabbage has a heart’. She won first prize, a top fashion parisian model dress. This was a wonderful prize for her and she was so excited. She had handmade her dresses herself, she did not have much money so this was something to look forward to. Later a post office van drew up outside her house on Horne Street, Halifax. She knew that her prize had arrived and rushed out into the street to receive it. The door closed behind her and she locked herself out. The van drove away and she tried desperately to open the door. I was a young toddler locked inside alone in the house. What was she to do. Well she lifted the metal coal cellar chute cover, threw the dress in the box down the chute, attempted to go down the shute herself, feet first. She got stuck at her shoulders and her bra was coming off. Road workmen nearby laughed and cheered as she quickly put her arms straight up in the air. Her busoms popped out and she shot down the chute like a torpedo. She landed on the coal stack and her ordeal was over. She looked fabulous in the dress.

Pantomimes and Concerts In 1942 she played a part as a principal boy in a pantomime at Rhodes Street Methodist Sunday School. While singing a lead song to a young girl on stage the audience screamed with laughter when her sagging, wrinkled tights slowly dropped down to her lilywhite ankles. A Business Lunch When Mother collected insurance in the 1960’s she was asked by an elderly lady if she would stay for a little bit of lunch.Mother was quite hungry actually and so followed the lady into the kitchen. The lady proceeded to place the pastry on a meat pie and she flattened the pastry by licking her thumb with spit from her mouth and pressing all around the edge of the pie until the edge was patted down. Mother suddenly remembered that she had an urgent appointment somewhere and asked if she could be excused and left. She hated the word SHE … and would retort every time it was indirectly said about her “Who’s she? … Cat’s Mother!” I feel as if she’s correcting me every time I mention SHE in this writing of her memoirs. Channel Swimmer? Mum would take my brother and I swimming regularly to Parkside, Woodside, Queeensbury, Ilkley Lido, Manningham Park, Scarborough Open-air, - Ken and I became very strong swimmers but mum could barely manage a breadth – god bless her. Could not ride a bike She could not ride a bike but would often be seen riding on the back of a tandem in her teens – sometimes doing a 50 mile trip with her boyfriend. She was seen doing her lipstick using a compact vanity mirror – no hands – no pedalling – radiant smile. Bleak winters & food for the table In the bleak winters of the 50’s she would wear two summer coats to keep warm. She could not afford a winter coat. She made her own dresses. She would walk on foot up to 50 miles and more a week in hail, rain, sleet and snow, collecting weekly insurance premiums in cash from many district rounds e.g. Ovenden to Boothtown, Skircoat Green to King Cross, Copley to Pye Nest , Highroad Well to Warley and Luddenden, Pellon to Mount Tabor. (She never passed her driving test.) She made many friends and was very popular. Big Daddy was her favourite lifeboy Mary was a Lifeboy Leader in about 1940 at Rhodes Street Boys Brigade Lifeboys. Famed wrestler Shirley Crabtree (Big Daddy) and his famed brothers Max (Promoter) and Brian (Also a wrestler) were members. Mum used to laugh when she pushed Shirley over the hobbyhorse with great difficulty.Shirley also played rugby for Bradford Northern. His schoolmates teased him and called him ‘Shirley Temple’. She also collected insurance premiums from their family home near the Halifax Parish Church. Pram Pusher In 1948 she lived at No. 3 Mixenden Stones in a rented cottage. She would visit her Family - her mum May Edith Ashworth, dad Thomas Ashworth and brother Norman on Horne Street, near Pellon Lane, Halifax, with me in the pram. My father took me back home on the bus and my mother, Mary, then did her weekly shop at Travis’s and Sutcliffe’s Shops in Pellon Lane. She then pushed the big new perambulator with hood over the Carriage Drive via Brackenbed, Wheatley and up the hill to Mixenden Village. A strenuous push-up for any woman or man with a pram full of groceries. The pram was later given to Pellon Lane Infants School (Formerly Board School) in 1953 as a rocking boat after the wheels were removed and made into a bogey.

Frankie made her swoon She swooned when she once met and said hello to Frankie Vaughan (Singer) in The Victoria Theatre Foyer. She adored him as a performer and loved his famous song “Give me the Moonlight … give me the girls.” She was a bit of a gas Halifax Gas Showrooms Sales Assistant. Elland Gas Showroom Manager where she had many amazing stories to tell. She met Lady Margaret Thatcher on two occasions in her showroom. Could pee faster One day, a Greetland farmer came into the Elland Showroom. “I want a water heater for my cattle mistal barn” he said straight to the point. Mary the brilliant saleswoman said “I’ve got just the right heater for you here. I will demonstrate for you luv.” He watched and held out his hand under the flowing water from the heater. “I can pee faster!” he said in a matter of fact voice. Mary, quick as a flash, replied…” Yes…but not as hot”. He said “I’ll have it”. Mary said “You’ll have to wait a few days while I get you one from our warehouse.” He said “I want it …now”. Mary said, “It’s a demonstration model and I CAN’T take it off the wall”. He went out to his land rover and came back in with a monkey wrench and took it off the wall. Mary was ticked off by the NEGAS area manager for selling a demonstration model. She said “I wanted the sale and I wasn’t going to lose it”. “Don’t you call ME luv!” A man came in one day to pay his bill. “Hello Luv, can I help you?” she asked him, He was agitated and replied “Don’t you call ME luv” “She said “Oh luv … I am sorry luv … for calling you luv!.” “Walker by name – Walker by nature” She often said this phrase. Mary often went for rambles with her friends in a local ramblers club. She loved walking and even in the millennium she boasted – “My limit for walking is 7 miles now.” She sent us a postcard from the Piece Hall – Halifax in 2002 (Aged 79yrs) which read … “I have just walked from Hove Edge through Shibden Valley and down Beacon Hill to get my shopping at the Piece Hall…..I love you very much” She often did this walk alone many times over the years and would get the bus back to Hove Edge.

Church Trip - Holiday to Jerusalem The Holy City.Mum went up a hill for solitude on her own. Near the top she saw a lone figure coming towards her – It was David Bellamy the fam ous naturalist and TV presenter. She said “Hello David … He replied “Hello do I know you?”. She replied “No – my name’s Mary.” He sat down and chatted with her for a while. She said he was a lovely man. Played Hockey Mary loved hockey and she played for St Augustine’s School and Halifax. The tradition lives on with her grandsons Leigh and Craig Walker who are first teamers and former captains of Halifax Hockey Club Team. She was very proud to see the Halifax Courier headline … “The sun shines on The Walker Brothers” when their team won the cup. Father - Loom Tuner & Haulage Business Her father Thomas Ashworth was the Captain of Ovenden Football Club in 1913. He ran a small haulage business before the war but his competitors stole his main customers while he was fighting in France. He came back with nothing but the clothes on his back and had over 30 operations for shrapnel and shell injuries to his stomach and legs. After the war he was a weaver at Dean Clough and liked a pint of beer. He would spend some of his wage before he got home on wage day at the Dusty Miller, Pellon Lane. Mary and Grandma would drag him home and tell him off. I remember he had a beautiful tenor voice and we, mum, my brother and I would listen to him singing ‘The Silver Trumpet’ in The New Street Inn tap room, Pellon in 1958, opposite our bedroom window before we went to sleep in our one-up-one-down house with shared toilet down the street. Her Uncles included a Councillor and a Mill Owner, and her grandfather Alfred Ramsden of Ferrybridge was a mining pit manager at Castleford. He had a pit prop accident and then left and went into Insurance – he became a manager (He was very good at maths and english.) He married Bernita a schoolteacher who was a practising Quaker. Mary at Work As a teenager at 14 she was a leather machinist at Waltons Leather Machinists, Square Road, near the Halifax Station. One day, a foreman who had a roving eye for her was spying at her through a little hole in the ladies toilet wall. She had her leatherworkers bradawl in her pinnie and she let him have it through the peep hole, pricking him on his cheek, just below his right eye. He screamed, bled and survived and never bothered her again. In her 20’s she would make leather music satchels, felt rabbits and soft toys and sell them from pub to pub. Right out on the moors near Wainstalls and Luddenden. My brother was inside the pram and I sat on top and we went miles on cobbled country lanes in the evening sun, driving rain and freezing snow. Policeman said “Is your mother called Mary Walker?” We had an old sit-up-and-beg Ford Popular Car when I was 17. Mother loaned me £100 to buy it. Ken and I were driving through King Cross late one night with four of our friends wearing gangster hats pretending in fun to be Al Capone’s gang. One of the lads had the starting handle pointing out of the back window pretending that it was a machine gun. A policeman with a torch stepped out into the road and signalled us to stop. When questioned about our behaviour and documentation the officer suddenly said, “Do they call your mother Mary?” I said “Yes” and he replied “She’s a very special lady, she’d be upset if she knew what you were up to and there’s too many passengers in this car – She collects my insurance premium every week – Get on your way – Goodnight.”

Some of Mary’s Sayings … “Worship God everyday, not just Sundays - God doesn’t just live in church. He’s everywhere, everyday and always with you!” She had an amazing faith. “Remember, enjoy this moment because you’ll never have it again.” “Enjoy yourself, It’s later than you think” “Save some petrol in your tank for tomorrow …You may need it!” (Meaning - save some of your energy, don’t spend it all today) Snappy repartee with Nurses While lying in bed the last few days of her life she was as quick as ever. Nurse – “Are you alright Mary?” Mary – “No, I’m half left” Nurse – “Do you want a drink Mary?” Mary – “Yes please, mine’s a whisky and dry ginger!” Nurse – “How do you like your tea Mary?” Mary – “Like my men … Hot and Strong!” Tongue Twister “Robert gave Richard a rap in the ribs for roasting the rabbit so rare.” Mum would often recite this tongue twister even in her 80’s and managed to make the Nurses in the Huddersfield General Hospital gasp and laugh when she was recovering from pneumonia in her last 14 days – Yes - she got it spot on. “Chocolate Mary?” Mary was offered some chocolates by a friend of ours at a recent Christmas 2006 Gathering – “Have you had a chocolate Mary? ---- “Would you like one?” – “Oh, yes please!” With chocolate all around her mouth - She reached for the chocolate with a toffee stuck to her finger – Her pocket was already full of chocolates. Loved children and animals She loved children, especially babies. She loved animals, although she was once attacked in her mid 50’s by a horse that had too much hot sun in a field near Coach Road. Her dog Rex ran for help and barked until someone came and found her. She had to have a metal pin implanted into her ankle. The big ‘C’ was beaten. Mary beat cancer twice – her thyroid was removed and she also had a full hysterectomy in her 40’s. She had two vascular strokes in her late 70’s and they damaged her brain memory functions which lead to the terminal illness dementia. Special Mother and Grandmother She was a fantastic, special mother and grandmother who never tiredof caring and sharing her love and happiness every day of her life. She had a very strong spirit and her memory will live forever and never fade.