First lady Mavis is pride of the Pirates

WHILE doffing their caps to Gillian Burns at Waterloo and Eileen Shepherd at Percy Park, Cornish Pirates are going in to bat for that much loved former president Mrs Mavis Lavery who served the club in that capacity for 21 years from 1945 to 1966.

This follows recent articles in which Gillian was listed as the first lady president of a club in England, appointed in 2004, and then Eileen who manned the pumps at Percy Park between 2000 and 2004.

Mavis, below, was a considerable lady who married into rugby when she tied the knot with Dick Lawry, a doctor from Guys Hospital and former Penzance player who not only served as the Penzance president for 25 years but doubled up as the Cornwall president between 1923 and 1945.

In September 1945, Dick was being lined up as the president of the newly amalgamated Penzance and Newlyn club when he passed away. Mavis, by now steeped in Cornish rugby folklore and politics and knowing just about everybody in the county, was asked if she would do the job instead and accepted.

Always tweed-clad and wearing her Pirates scarf, she was seldom missing from her seat in front of the stand for the next 21 years and under her guidance the Priates built a reputation as the most hospitable club in the land with their post-match meals particularly noteworthy, enticing many big names to make the long trip to Cornwall with their clubs rather than taking the weekend off.

Besides being the president, she also performed other important club roles. Mavis was the chairman of the ladies committee, served as the membership secretary, and was also a member of the social committee and the summer activities committee.

A member of the Red Cross, she helped run a weekly club for old people and assisted, too, with the meals-on-wheels service in the Penzance area and in her spare time was a civil defence warden and treasurer of the social club, a fundraiser for Penzance Cricket Club, and a member of the house committee of West Cornwall Hospital. Unsurprisingly she was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the 1962 New Year’s Honours List in recognition of her tireless social and charitable work.