Brother and sister die just four days apart

A MEMORIAL service will be held this month for two Dundee-born siblings who died just four days apart.

Edith Strachan and Ernie Pont both died last month – Ernie on his 91st birthday on January 16 and Edith four days later, aged 89.

Edith’s daughter Edith Sim has paid tribute to her mum and uncle, saying both “lived life to the fullest”.

“They were very close,” said Miss Sim, a professor in pharmacology at Oxford University.

“They always kept in touch, they called each other all the time, and before telephones they used to send each other letters.

“They were both just so very outgoing and full of life. The funny thing is that they even got married months apart.”

After their mum Molly died of tuberculosis when Edith was two and Ernie was three, Edith spent 18 months in the sanatorium in Auchterhouse amid concerns she had also contracted the disease.

Dad David fought i n both world wars before remarrying and having two more children, Helen and David, with his second wife Helen.

At the outbreak of war in 1939 Edith was sent to Banchory and Ernie to a farm in Montrose.

Ernie volunteered for the Army in 1947 and was stationed in Kent, where he met a Land Army woman named Eileen.

The pair lived down south and were married for more than 70 years.

Edith married Joe, who lived up the same close on Stirling Street, Dundee.

He ran an office equipment business on Rosebank Street and Exchange Street.

Edith worked as a seamstress at Hamilton Carhartt, in the DRI sewing room and Dingwall’s laundry on Rosebank Street.

She moved to Ellengowan Drive with Joe and daughter Edith in 1962, where she lived until 2017. At the time of her departure she was Ellengowan’s longest-residing tenant.

She spent her final years in Oxfordshire, close to her daughter Edith, who with her husband Bob has carried out research into immunology and tuberculosis.

Joe died in 2006 and her sister Helen died four years ago. Brother David still lives in Birkhill.

Edith was also a Sunday school teacher for more than 50 years and a member of Trinity Church on Crescent Street, where a memorial service for the siblings will be held at 9.30am on February 23 – the day before what would have been Edith’s 90th birthday.

Ernie and Edith grew up in the Hilltown and died within four days of each other.