Tom Isherwood has submitted his final letter to the editor
One of The Herald’s most prolific letter writers has died.
Tom Isherwood passed away May 7 at the age of 85 after a brief stay in hospital.
He left behind a wife, Cheryl, and daughter, Brenda, and was pre-deceased by another daughter, Vicki.
At his request, there will be no funeral. “He said: ‘I don’t want anybody staring at me. I want you to have a nice barbecue in the summer and that will be good enough,” said Cheryl by phone on Thursday morning.
“And he said: “If you do anything else, you’ll be sorry.’ Isn’t that Tom?” she said with a laugh.
Following retirement from a career with Correctional Services of Canada, Isherwood moved to Olalla and wrote hundreds of letters to The Herald, the last of which was published April 23, 2024.
Many of his early letters dealt with his experiences as a British home child, following his birth in England in 1939 during the Second World War. He passed through a series of orphanages and boarding schools, which landed him in Vancouver at the age of eight.
Isherwood and his younger brother, Joe, were split up and only met twice before a 2012 reunion in Olalla. They later learned they had three sisters.
"We lost something: A God-given right to a childhood. It was taken away,” said Isherwood in a 2012 interview.
He later chronicled his experiences in a 2021 book called: “The Best I Remember – A Cruel British Tragedy.”
MP Dan Albas, whose riding of Central Okanagan-Similkameen-Nicola encompasses Olalla, was among the first to pay tribute to Isherwood this week.
“Most will know Tom as a highly opinionated man – and he was. But when we would sit down on his porch and speak of his experiences, those opinions were born out of difficult challenges, the school of hard knocks and most of all hard work,” wrote Albas on X.
“He was a proud Canadian and I am proud to call him a friend. I wish my schedule had allowed for one more game of pool.”