MISSING . . . and FOUND!
THE DAILY MAIL offers readers a unique opportunity to re-establish contact with long-lost relatives and friends. Each week, MONICA PORTER features the story of someone trying to find a missing loved one, as well as a tale of people reunited. This column is produced in conjunction with the voluntary tracing service, Searching For A Memory, run by Gill and John Whitley. Jennifer Hankinson, 68, writes: ‘December 4 this year will mark my golden wedding anniversary and i would love to find my two bridesmaids, Joan Daley and Val Lewis.
‘We have all moved quite a lot over the past 50 years and have lost contact.
‘My husband alan and i were married at st Mary’s church in Pr e s t wi c h , Great e r Manchester. Val and i had been good friends all through secondary school — Hope Park, an all-girls secondary modern in town — and went bell-ringing every Thursday.
‘Val wed shortly after me and moved to nearby Whitefield.
‘Joan and i went to Jersey on holiday together in 1964. she lived in Blackley, Manchester, and we used to go to the city’s Bodega club (where i met alan on new Year’s eve, 1963).
‘fond memories, but i don’t even know if Joan ever married. i would love to be in touch with her and Val again as alan and i wish to invite them to our anniversary do.
‘in 1992 we moved to Wales, where we bought a hotel and now live just outside Prestatyn, a beautiful part of north Wales.
‘i am now retired but i was a dictaphone typist, and have two children — my daughter Tracy, who is 48 and lives in australia, and my son alan, who lives in the Blackpool area, where we moved in the early seventies.
‘i also have three gorgeous grandchildren.
‘i do hope you will be able to find Joan and Val for us, so that they can maybe share our big day this December.’ LasT May Jan Grigg was looking for fellow trainee army nurses from four-and-a-half decades ago.
she wrote: ‘in June 1970, aged 18, i joined Queen alexandra’s royal army nursing Corps and started my training in aldershot, Hampshire.
‘There, i met 60 other girls who had also enrolled.
‘after six weeks of being taught to march, salute, recognise the rank system and gain a st John ambulance first-aid certificate, we were split up and posted to two military hospitals in the Uk, Tidworth in Wiltshire and Catterick, north Yorkshire.
‘That november six of us were sent to the military hospital over in Hannover, Germany, where our nurse training began in earnest.
‘We worked on the wards for 12 weeks and studied in our own time. Curfew was at 10pm and we were bed- checked every night by the duty nCo and landed on a charge if we were late back.
‘i later completed my nurse training at Bedford General Hospital, and returned to my home town of Grays, essex.
‘i became a district nurse, then an occupational health adviser for a multi-national company, until retirement in 2009. over this time i lost contact with my fellow trainees, but have found one, Brenda shore, and we’d be delighted to find any of the others.’
Well what a result! We have been able to reconnect Jan and Brenda with a slew of their trainee-nurse chums: kathy kilroy, avril ellse, Pam isdale, Gaynor Boardman, elaine Gibson, shelly Dubber and Beth Charman.
i can see a merry reunion looming . . .