KATHLEEN GOWERS

MRS Kathleen Gowers, of Waterfoot, has died on Tuesday, January 18, in Royal Blackburn Hospital, aged 91.

She had been relatively well for her age until accidentally fracturing her hip in November, from which she never fully recovered.

Kathleen Ruston (as she then was) grew up in Edgeside with her elder sister, Renee, her father, mother, and grandmother, in the years immediately prior to and during the Second World War.

She attended Edgeside Primary School, Newchurch Primary School, and Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School, obtaining outstandingly good results in the Higher National Certificate examination (the equivalent of the subsequent GCE and GCSE exams).

In today’s world, she would almost certainly have moved on to university education, but Rossendale was a very different place in those days. Almost everyone left school at the earliest opportunity to go to work, and Kathleen followed some of her friends, obtaining employment in the local income tax offices in Rawtenstall.

She subsequently moved to take up a secretarial position at Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School in 1956, where she worked until her retirement in 1990, except for a brief period in the 1960s when she moved to first St Mary’s Primary School in Rawtenstall and then Haslingden Grammar School. Her later years at BRGS were in the position of bursar.

Kathleen’s life outside work was very much based around her family.

In 1951 she had married Marshall Gowers, whom she met when playing tennis on Edgeside Park, and they enjoyed 64 happy years of marriage, which was curtailed by Marshall’s death in 2016.

They had one son, Ken, born in 1953.

Her other interests were in local history and music, and for many years she regularly attended the Halle Orchestra concerts in Manchester. She was also prominent in Lumb Women’s Institute, including holding the role of President for a number of years. More recently, she became involved in creating items with cross stitch.

Kathleen is survived by her son Ken, his wife Ana, and two grandchildren, Charlotte and Emily, born in the early 1990s, to whom she was very closely attached.

Throughout her life, Kathleen was noted for her kindness to everyone, often being more concerned about resolving other people’s problems rather than her own.

The funeral service will be held on Thursday, February 3, at 12.15pm at St Nicholas’ Church, Newchurch, followed by cremation at Burnley

Crematorium at 1.45pm.

Revd. Scott Richardson will officiate.

Family flowers only, please. Donations may be made to either the Marie Curie Foundation or the British Heart Foundation, www.fredhamer.co.uk

Funeral director: Dawn Winfield for Fred Hamer Funeral Services, Rawtenstall.