Tributes to those we lost ‘who all have story worth telling’
Historian MERVYN EDWARDS looks back at some of the prominent local figures who died during 2020
NEVER mind saying goodbye to 2020, most people I know will be all too ready to give it the two-fingered salute.
The covid pandemic has brought misery and chaos to most of us, and I have done my best to keep this column bright and uplifting in the face of the pervading gloom.
However, we are the ones who may count ourselves lucky. Many good people did not survive 2020 – some of them struck down by covid – and today we will pay tribute to just a few North Staffordshire folk who we have lost in the last year.
Some are well-known and others not – but all of us have a story that is worth telling.
Connie Ellen Yoxall – known rather better perhaps as Greta
Van Buren – died in July, aged 83.
She and her husband Fred were awarded the Freedom of the
Borough of Newcastle in
2017.
She had spent much of her working life as an illusionist and magician’s assistant alongside Fred. As circus stalwarts, they made many television appearances and were familiar faces on the magician David Nixon’s television show.
There are few better qualified to explain Connie’s role as a musician’s assistant than son and fellow performer Andrew Van
Buren.
“Mum was a master of the art,” Andrew told
Sentinel. “Years of experience taught her that when she needed to draw attention, she should do it with class and style.
When she needed to fade into the background, she could become almost invisible.
“But always her presence was there, never missing a beat, organising the other girls and stage crew and props – and she was never late.”
Months before Connie died,
I was invited over to the Van
Buren home in Silverdale. If you ever saw TV footage of the inside of Ken Dodd’s house in Knotty Ash, you’ll have some idea of the interior appearance of the Van Buren abode, which is a veritable shrine to the performer’s art, bursting at the seams with playbills, posters, props and framed photographs, a farrago of showbiz souvenirs. researched assiduously at Keele Connie was travelling and University archives and other performing worldwide even repositories of history. before I was born, but here she He was particularly interested in was in a little house in pottery – and collected it – but wrote Silverdale serving me tea and snippets of well-researched material biscuits and chatting to me like on old pubs and the facts relating to a long-lost gran. It was a the life and death of Margaret ‘Molly’ reminder to me that what we Leigh, the alleged Burslem Witch. are communicates far more He showed great willingness to eloquently than anything we help yours truly with community say or have done. history projects in Burslem and as his Nevertheless, Connie’s health really began to fail, I visited lifetime achievements were him on several occasions at his recognised by the crowds of clutter-filled house at the top end of people who signed a Burslem. condolences book in the Van It was an Aladdin’s cave of
Buren Yard, prior to historical bric-a-brac, housing a Connie’s funeral procession. gallimaufry of books, ceramic plates It was filmed by Professor and framed pictures, all reeking of age.rayjohnsonfrom
Staffordshire Film Archives, Warwick’s lockdown funeral took who is in our picture. place at Bradwell Crematorium in Warwick Foster was July and was a no-frills send-off simultaneously one of the befitting of this unostentatious, most tenacious and pragmatic man who died at the age of unsung local historians in 85. Neither his birthdate nor the date North Staffordshire. I of his death were given at the funeral first knew him when we service – which was strange, were regular attendees considering the departed man’s love of Tunstall History of history.
Society, formed in Beloved wife Pat and about a dozen 1996, whilst he also family members and friends supported Stoke-onincluding myself left the funeral
Trent Archaeological service to the strains of The Carnival Society. Is Over, my favourite song by
He had a particular Australian pop legends, The Seekers. fascination for And so departed a terrier-like Burslem – and for historian and a noble, working-class historical accuracy. man.
It was no use winging Popular tourist guide Syd Bailey your history in was no stranger to the local history Warwick’s presence, scene, either, and I wrote about his as nothing got past life earlier this year, following his him. death at the age of 98.
Despite his severe Afterwards I received a telephone disability issues, call from a Sentinel reader who had which kept him numerous memories of being taught house-bound in his by Syd. Perhaps other readers recall later years, Warwick his work as a teacher at Bradeley
Secondary Modern, Brindley Ford School, Chell Secondary School and Ball Green School.
We also said farewell to Reg Farr (born 1931) this year. My fellow Wolstantonian was a former brick and tile worker and trade unionist with a great sense of history and a peppery, pointed humour.
Here is a typically colourful recollection of the Etruria Valley in the 1930s, blending Reg’s fondness for nostalgia with his political opinions: “The valley floor was a marshy wasteland with the sluggish and filthy Fowlea Brook making its way from the Chatterley Valley to the River Trent in Stoke. A popular holiday pastime was to go jumping the ‘oil brook’ as we then called the Fowlea Brook. On several occasions, I fell about four feet short, landing in the muddy water. It didn’t go down well when I got home.
“Children from the surrounding districts were all pupils in this ‘university of life’ and we were the better for it. The Vodafone building in Etruria now occupies a small part of the area and no doubt when the last stretches of the valley are developed, there will be even more monotonous, cladded sheds and retail outlets selling products from the Far East made by the cheap labour that has replaced British cheap labour.
“No wonder that today’s children cry that they are bored and obesity is becoming a problem. Where is the adventure in modern playgrounds and modern swings, compared to the fun of catching newts and sticklebacks?”
Many people gathered outside the Victoria Lounge bar in Hanley in November in order to pay their last respects to owner David Deakes, aged 81, of Trentham. They watched the slow drive-past of the funeral
cortege along Bagnall Street. Several buses, on their way back to Hanley bus station, were temporarily stopped in their tracks by the black cars and hearse.
The Victoria Lounge, run by David’s daughter Mandie, has an incredibly strong customer base, and drinkers such as myself as well as snooker fans lined the pavements.
David and Peter Shelley opened what was then known as the Reardon back in 1983 and henceforth developed a popular social and snooker venue that owes much to the hands-on spirit and impeccable manners of the Deakes.
I was on good terms with David, and on one occasion, only about eight months ago, referred to him in conversation as ‘Mr Deakes’ as a mark of my respect for his age and his achievements at this venue.
However, he was having none of it, and responded that as I wasn’t a 12-year-old, I should call him David. He will be much-missed by the older generation in the Victoria Lounge bar – as well as by ‘young lads’ like myself.