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.
AN OLD snapshot prompted happy memories and a search for a favourite cousin.
Julian Ken Noakes of Weybridge, Surrey, wrote: ‘I’d love to discover what happened to my cousins, Ann, Anthony and Stuart Woodward. I never met Anthony or Stuart, but Ann was a frequent visitor to my grandparents’ home in Northampton, where I lived with my parents.
‘We moved away in 1954. My mother, Dorothy Noakes, and Ann’s mother, Judy Woodward (both nee Pollard), were sisters. I last saw Ann in 1950: I was four and she was six. That’s us on the doorstep of my grandparents’ house.
‘I have lovely memories of her when she stayed with us of walking in the park and playing in her pedal car.
‘This was when her mother, Judy, had left her husband and moved in with us for a short spell.
‘Judy served in the WRAF, where she met accountant William Woodward, an RAF pilot stationed at RAF Hooton in Cheshire. They married in Northampton in 1943 and had their three children, but it was a stormy relationship. I don’t recall ever seeing my uncle.
‘Judy eventually returned to live in Northampton, without her children, in the Fifties.
‘I haven’t been able to find out what happened to my three cousins and would love to find out.’ LAST spring, an avid reader of this column decided to become part of it.
John Keen, from Tewkesbury, Glos, wrote: ‘I have found the Missing and Found column very interesting for what seems like decades.
‘So, having drifted well past my three score years and ten, and fast approaching being a nonagenarian, I ask myself what happened to the friends I met along the way. How have they fared through life?
‘I am reminded of the time in the late Forties when I served in the Royal Engineers, E& M Section, HQ BAOR as a corporal in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany. The photo is of me with three ATS girls who drove the staff cars for officers. I remember them as Marie, Anne and “Jumbo”.
‘They were nice girls, and it would be good to correspond with any of them, or any other colleagues from that time who might remember me.’
Well, we received this response from Joanne Peacock: ‘My grandma, Sylvia Hill, hopes to contact John Keen, whose story appeared in your column. She was with the ATS in 1947 and knew John and Jumbo.
‘She would love to get in touch and try to find these old Army pals.’
John was delighted: ‘How lovely of you to make contact with me on behalf of your grandmother, Sylvia!
‘I remember her well and have a picture of her in my rogues gallery of photos from those days. We have so much news to exchange.’
I left them to it to organise a jolly reunion after nearly seven decades.