Love of County Town drew Ena home
Family favourites
Ena Naghi has supplied us with several interesting stories over the past few weeks. But Ena’s own life story is pretty interesting itself.
She grew up with her mother and father, Elizabeth (née Baker) and Walter Smith, and her siblings Kathleen and Frank in Queen’s Avenue, Maidstone, attending West Borough School.
Her first job, at 14, was at Foster Clark’s canning factory in Barker Road.
After four years she was enticed away by the higher wages being offered at Woolworths.
Sadly, that came to an end after about six months, when she objected to being given a lecture by management about chatting too much to the other shopgirls.
She moved instead to Springfield Mill (Whatman’s).
“That was the best job I ever had,” she said, working machines to produce filter paper and art paper. She said: “It was easy. There were no charge-hands and the bosses just let you get on with it.”
She admits that some of her colleagues rather took advantage of the light management style. She said: “One lady used to go home for lunch, which she took at the pub at the bottom of Peel Street. When she came back to work, she would sit and sleep all afternoon.”
While there, Ena met her future husband. Alex Naghi was Romanian. He was one of the hundreds of thousands of people who had become displaced victims of the Second World War. He was living in Scotland when the war ended. Romania of course ended up in the Communist bloc; unable to return home, he was offered his choice of country to live.
Naturally, he settled in Tovil in Maidstone, where he worked in a ragstone quarry. Later, he too moved to Springfield Mill.
The couple married and moved into 153 Boxley Road, where Ena had her first two children Peter and Stephen.
At that point, Alex decided to emigrate to America to help a sick relative there. The family settled in Trenton, New Jersey.
Ena had two more children there – David and Robert – but although she said she found the Americans “lovely people” she grew homesick and after nine years they returned to Maidstone, and to Queens Road.
Her son David is now a Maidstone borough councillor. Born in America and with an American passport, Cllr Naghi is one of the longest-serving borough councillors, having been elected at the same time as the current mayor, Cllr Derek Butler.
It raises the prospect that Cllr Naghi may soon become Maidstone’s first American mayor.