High-flying Bas worked hard – and played hard
A MILITARY man and loving fatherof-two has died at the age of 92.
Basil Watkins, known lovingly as “Bas”, was known all over South Wales, with his sons Eliot and Greg Watkins having received 500 letters of condolence since his passing.
Born in Ebbw Vale on January 24, 1928, Basil won a scholarship to attend Jones West Mon Haberdashers school, where he was described as a diligent student.
On leaving school in 1946, Basil took his first steps of his military career and hoped to join the RAF.
According to his son Greg, the recruiting sergeant remarked: “Do you not know that the war is over laddie? And the country does not need pilots any more.”
So Bas spent the next three years with the Royal Navy before embarking on a civil engineering degree at the University of Birmingham.
“However, probably his greatest achievement at university was to meet his future wife Eileen,” said son Greg.
The couple were married for 58 years before Eileen died, and shared two sons and a granddaughter Hannah.
The pair married in 1955 and lived in Birmingham while Basil worked for Tube Investments before returning to South Wales, where they lived in Appletree Cottage in Pendoylan for the next 46 years.
“He loved living in Pendoylan and was very much involved in village life,” said Greg, who told how his father went on to become chairman of many committees in the area, and helped the village maintain its Best Kept Village title for many years.
As well as being a military man and civil engineer, Basil had a successful career in management and was the national chairman of the Institution of Works Managers between 1977 and 1979. Part of his role meant he often appeared in the media, including on Newsnight and Panorama.
His son Eliot told how this role once put him in a difficult position as a military man who admired the Prince of Wales. He was once put in a place to criticise his management skills.
Basil also had his original wish of joining the RAF granted when he left the Navy, and spent eight years flying out of dozens of airfields, including St Athan and Llandow.
“Indeed, he joked that he did much of his courting of Eileen by flying over her house in Birmingham and tipping his wings.”
Bas also became the deputy commandant of Glamorgan and eventually retired as colonel and commandant in 1988.
In terms of his family life, son Eliot described Basil as a great father and workaholic who loved to socialise with everyone from all walks of life.
“My mother used to say ‘We have been out for 14 nights in a row,’ he would not stay in, you could not walk down a street in Cardiff or Cowbridge without him stopping to talk to someone. He worked hard but he played hard as well
“He was a little man with a large personality. At the age of 90 he still ran the bingo!”