Rams fan Eunice hits 100
SHE HAS FOLLOWED TEAM ALL HER LIFE,
A LIFELONG Derby County fan and much-loved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-greatgrandmother will turn 100 today.
Eunice Dring, who has lived in Derby for over nine decades, was born on March 19, 1921, in Burton.
One of nine children, she spent her early years having to share a double bed with her siblings in a small house in Little Burton West.
Aged eight, she and her family moved to Burnaby Street in Alvaston, with Eunice starting her studies at Derby’s St Mary’s.
As the domestic threat of the Second World War grew in the 1940s, Eunice and her family found themselves setting up an Anderson air-raid shelter in the backyard.
Eunice would help her father, an airraid warden, to alert people to potential bombings, walking around her local area with a whistle to warn residents to turn their lights out.
As she reached working age, she took a job at Celanese, then a chemical factory in Spondon, and would spend time with the men in the workshops.
She noticed one particularly shy lad named John, but he never summoned up the courage to go and speak to her.
Instead, she met and married Harry Bradford, a Rolls-Royce worker and avid fan of sports, especially cricket and football. The couple were married for 22 years and had two daughters, Pat and Angela. They would make sure to watch every Derby County game they could at the club’s old Baseball Ground.
After the pair divorced, Eunice kept herself busy with her work at a local laundrette and then Coussins Hardware in Alvaston and Allenton, as well as by sewing and playing bingo.
At Coussins, Eunice met a lady who invited her to her daughter’s wedding, which is where she was introduced to a widower called John – who turned out to be the man she had laid eyes on all those years ago.
Within a week John asked Eunice to marry her and she accepted, becoming Mrs Dring and stepmother to Maureen.
Her new husband was a keen gardener and the pair had a wonderful life together until his death in 2007.
Since then, Eunice has continued gardening and enjoys knitting, watching The Chase quiz show and Final Score every weekend.
She still has two brothers and a sister, as well as her loving daughters, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren, as well as a fouryear-old great-great-granddaughter who lives in the US.
Eunice’s family have said they will try to make her big day as special as it can be.
A chance meeting at a friend’s wedding led to her meeting a widower she knew from years before...