‘Skills are key...I bought my girls tool kits, not dolls’
CAPTAIN Sir Tom Moore believes youngsters should be taught practical vocational skills.
In an interview with this week’s Radio Times, the 100-year-old national hero – who raised millions for the NHS by walking around his garden – spoke on a range of issues.
But he stressed the need for young people to be taught useful skills for life. His upbringing influenced that of his daughters Hannah, whose house he now shares, and Lucy.
Captain Tom said: “Children should be taught to do mechanical things.
“When my two girls were small, I didn’t buy them dolls. I used to buy them tools. They had very fine tool kits, and have been practical ever since.”
The former British Army officer and centenarian has always been a practical man. He rebuilt and rode his first motorbike over the north Yorkshire Moors at the age of just 12. “I’m not boasting but I got it going,” he said.
“I didn’t have teddy bears. My father was keen on motorcycles, so mechanical things followed through.”
A toy, for Sir Tom, was something to be created, he added. “My father would bring me a piece of wood and some nails and let me hammer nails into the wood. When I had done that, he would bring me a bigger hammer.”
Such practical skills served him well when he was a dispatch rider dodging bullets in the Burmese jungle during the Second World War. “Well, you don’t get frightened at 22,” he said of this episode. He also told how he retired to the Costa del Sol with his wife Pamela when he was 67. He was almost 50 when he married his sweetheart, 15 years his junior.
He said: “I don’t know why I left it so late to be married. You have to wait until you find the right person, and we had two beautiful daughters.”
The couple returned to the UK when Pamela developed a degenerative brain disorder and Tom visited her every day for five years before she died in 2006.
He added: “Pamela was a very pretty girl and charming and kind to everyone. I loved her and really looked after her for the rest of her life.”
Despite his incredible achievements, Captain Tom remains modest, saying: “I’m an ordinary person and always have been. An ordinary person like me can do good things in the end.”