My theme for this challenge is family and relations.
Father – “a male parent of a child”
My father was named William John but was always known as
Jack. I’ve no idea why. There’s lots I don’t know about him but I do
know he was born in South Wales in 1917.
He may have had brothers and sisters but I’m not sure. At a fairly young age his parents separated
and his father, my grandfather, took him to Yorkshire. After that I believe he had very little
contact with his original family and his dad remarried and had 3 more children,
a half-brother and two half-sisters for my dad.
There wasn’t much in the way of job opportunities at the
time so my father ended up going into the coal mines at about 14. To escape he enlisted for the army as soon as
he could so that would have been at 16 in 1933.
And then came World War 2. My dad
saw active service in this and was one of the soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk. Something he never talked about. My parents were married during the war, my
Dad had a 3 day leave pass for that. He
didn’t leave the army immediately the war ended but he was home by the time my
brother was born in 1947.
Being in the army had enabled him to train as a mechanical
engineer and he took up work in a nearby chemical manufacturing plant. He worked there for the rest of his life.
He and my mum were quite strict parents, but they were
always fair. He doted on my mum and
although he would go out or a drink occasionally, and worked some weekends,
they were very close. We were never
without money but there was never loads of it and Dad always worked hard
looking forward to when he could retire.
Unfortunately that wasn’t to be as he was struck down with
cancer aged 64. He remained at home which
was what he wanted and it was a hard time for us all but he bore it with great
dignity. He set a great example to us
and one of the things I’ve always tried to emulate is never to sleep on an
argument. He and mum rarely argued but
if they did it was always resolved before bedtime and I think this is very good
advice.
