Extraordinary LIVES
HAVE you lost a relative or friend in recent months whose life you’d like to celebrate? Our Friday column tells the stories of ordinary people who lived extraordinary lives. Email your 350-word tribute to: lives@ dailymail.co.uk or write to: Extraordinary
HER first name was Heather, but she preferred the nickname Sammy because she said people in our native Liverpool couldn’t pronounce Heather properly. She was the life and soul of any gathering, always keen to make a difference to anyone she met. And she certainly made a big difference to me. We met at a Liverpool nightclub in 1981. Both divorcees, I was 29 and Sammy was 32. She’d trained as a nurse after leaving school at 16, then later became a policewoman, but wasn’t completely happy in either role. A few years after we got together, I decided to leave my job and study for a degree in electrical engineering. She supported me by starting a business doing something she was really good at: baking. By then we had our daughter Alexandra, who would play while Sammy baked all sorts of pies to order, which she delivered around the Stoneycroft district of Liverpool. She’d bake all day and when I came home from college the kitchen would look as if a bomb had gone off, with flour everywhere. Sammy being the breadwinner enabled me to get qualified and land a good job with a phone company. At last she could relax a bit. We finally got married in 1991. Alexandra, who was then six, felt it was about time! In 2007, I
sold my telecoms company and we emigrated to Andalusia in Spain to live in a village surrounded by olive groves. Sammy made friends easily and we were quickly adopted by the locals. As a fluent Spanish speaker, I gave lessons to expats, but Sammy soon picked up the language all on her own. The annual village fiesta took place in the square outside our house, with live music and dancing until 5am, so our windows would be shaking all night long. It was a great life. But in 2010 we were involved in a car accident. Sammy’s right foot was badly injured and this marked the beginning of her health problems. The following year, we moved to Erith, Kent, to be near Alexandra. At our sheltered housing scheme, Sammy helped organise concerts, birthday parties, bingo and darts tournaments, and ran her sausage club, which provided breakfast every Friday. She’d had to give up driving because of her foot problem, but got a mobility scooter, which she blinged up and rode to the shops and to get her hair done. But the pain grew worse and she was diagnosed with blocked arteries and needed a below-knee amputation. With typical fortitude, Sammy was learning to walk with a prosthetic limb when she suffered a stroke. Alexandra and I were able to say goodbye to her in the hospital. Despite her problems, Sammy always thought of others and was a tireless fundraiser for charities. She was the love of my life and not a day goes by when Alexandra and I don’t smile at some happy memory of Sammy. n HEATHER SAMANTHA SPENCER-JONES, born July 31, 1949; died June 19, 2020, aged 70.