My soulmate, the husband who could do everything
WE’RE used to reading obituaries of the rich and famous. But the Mail believes Britain is full of unsung heroes and heroines who also deserve recognition. So today we launch a weekly obituary column with a difference — in which the moving and inspirationa
MY HUSBAND BRIAN by Gill Jenkins, 74
My MOST precious husband Brian and I met at a rock ’n’ roll night in a community hall in Swindon in 1958.
I was a 14-year-old schoolgirl wearing flouncy net petticoats that showed as I danced and he was 15 in jeans and crepe shoes. We became inseparable.
Brian was already a keen swimmer with the Swindon Dolphins ASC, but he didn’t expect that, six years later (after winning silver in the 1962 European Championships, a bronze in the Commonwealth Games and becoming British 200m butterfly champion), he’d be selected to represent Great Britain in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.
Olympic preparation was rather different back then. There was no sponsorship, no official training, no nutritionist — Brian used to crack 12 eggs into a pint glass and drink them down for protein — and no money.
In the run-up to the Games, our local pool was closed for refurbishment, so every day we took the 6am milk train to the 50m pool in Monkton Park, Chippenham, Wilts.
It was open-air, unheated and next to the Avon, which flooded in bad weather, sweeping toads into the pool. I once fell in trying to rescue a couple of toads.
Each morning he swam 200 lengths. Then, with his eyes streaming red from the chlorine that was thrown in by the bucketload, he’d head off to the local pub for a hot breakfast.
(The head of Brian’s youth club, Bill Bryant, had persuaded the publican to open at 9am and even paid for the food.)
I was his girlfriend, coach and support. I had a stopwatch to time him and used to rub wintergreen oil into his body to protect him from the cold.
After breakfast, it was back in the pool for another 300 lengths before returning to Swindon to get on with his plumbing training.
When he got to the Olympics — his official badge sewn onto the front of his
trunks by my mum and with a pair of goggles paid for by the youth club — he realised that at 5ft 8in he was a foot shorter than most of the Russians and Eastern Europeans. He didn’t get a medal, but he loved it.
on his return, he was invited to meet the Queen in Buckingham Palace and prime minister Harold Wilson at Downing street. the next day, he was back at work as a plumber. six weeks later we were married. If he came down with a bump, he never showed it.
He was good at everything he set his mind to. He bought a piece of land and built a house. He set up a plumbing company, employing 35 people, and for a while juggled competitions with work and opening the occasional swimming pool.
In 1967, our daughter Karen was born. our son Paul arrived at home in a bit of a hurry the next year and when the doctor and midwife raced to the wrong Jenkins family down the road, Brian very calmly delivered the baby himself on our bed and cut the umbilical cord.
He was an amazing father, never missing one of Paul’s football games, transporting most of the team on the back seat of his Volvo estate and taking us all on fantastic caravan holidays to the south of France.
In his late 40s, he took up body building and, aged 47, became Mr Natural (ie no steroids) Great Britain. two years later, he entered the British Masters and won the butterfly 200m. He held the British 200m butterfly record for 43 years.
throughout it all, he remained the kindest, most contented and humble man. You’d have to go into the loft to find any of his olympic kit or his invitation to 10 Downing street.
In later life, after we’d sold the plumbing business and retired, he kept up swimming and cycling, but spent more time at our allotment with his beloved dogs, chickens and ducks.
He could grow anything and was always leaving bags of vegetables on our neighbours’ front door handles. It was in 2007 that illness started creeping in, despite his healthy lifestyle — diabetes, two heart attacks, double bypass surgery and a stroke. But he never gave in. He never despaired.
one day after his bypass surgery he was doing his exercises in the local pool when a lifeguard came over and asked if he’d like some swimming lessons. ‘No thank you,’ he said politely — of course, it would never have occurred to him to say who he was.
After six weeks in the Great Western Hospital, swindon, Brian died of a heart infection last Christmas Eve, his family by his side. then the letters started coming. there were dozens and dozens, telling of all the small and large ways he’d quietly helped people over the years — paying off someone’s mortgage, footing the bill for a hip replacement, helping people out in times of need.
We were married for 53 years and I loved him so very much. We were like one person.
so I try to do what Brian would do — smile, open my eyes, love and remember his life motto: ‘It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.’
BRIAN JENKINS was born on June 20, 1943. he died on December 24, 2017, aged 74.