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Harold Taylor was born in the same year as Queen Elizabeth II, youngest of 6 children, two of which were Flo and Kath. Harold recalls...
After the Second World War Flo got an exchange of teacher situation in America. She went to Indianapolis, where she lodged with a family, who was in fact from Bournemouth. Their name was Welch. He was a director of General Motors and had negotiated the takeover of Bedford Motors in 1928. Flo had a very successful exchange and so liked their system that she was anxious to emigrate. She kept up her acquaintance with the Welch family.
When she returned to this country she took up teaching in Kent, but found conditions very unsatisfactory. She managed eventually to get another teaching exchange, this time in Canada.
Sadly, in 1948 Mr Welch suddenly died. I am not quite sure of the sequence of events thereafter, and Flo later went to live with Bobby Welch in California and acted as companion. At the same time she took up teaching in Santa Monica, where she taught many of the famous' children. She qualified for her pension about the same time that Bobby, who suffered from diabetes, died.
Our mother by then was over ninety, so Flo came home to help care for her until she died at the age of 93.
Kath, 11 years my senior, also started out at Worthing High School, transferring to Chichester, when we moved from Arundel in 1927. She also eventually went to the Bishop Otter College. When she passed out she went to teach at Alum Rock, in Birmingham, where she lodged with the Malins, descendants of my grandfather's only sister.
Here she remained until fairly early in the war, when she was quite unnerved whilst she was cycling around the Ring Road, and pursued by a German Bomber, which was machine gunning the area around her. She applied for a posting to Guildford, where she remained till well after the war, sharing a flat with another teacher ('Springy') of the same school.
'Springy', as was her nickname, came from Esher, and later went on some colonial teaching spree that took her to one of the Rhodesias, where she ended her career and life, as she contracted cancer.
Kath, in her twilight years, moved back to Chichester and took a post at Boxgrove village school, where she remained until her retirement. Not long before that came about, she took stock of the situation, and realised that she had not advanced with the times, and had investments of only about £100 other than her anticipated pension. She was then living at the Bedford Hotel.
With the help of Cousin Charlie Newell, she was put in touch with some housing that was available for purchase over a short period and was able to get herself on the right lines for the eventful day of retirement.
During her period at that school, she was in touch with one of my contemporaries, Ian McCoy, who had lived in the same road. I also met him when he was serving in the Police, at the same time as myself. He had left the service and gone into teaching, and he did some of his teacher training at Boxgrove before taking up an appointment at Selsey, where his wife also taught. It was from Kath that I learned he had died so tragically young.
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