Memories of Rosemary

Rosemary in Palma, Majorca

It would have been Rosemary’s 93rd birthday today.

I have been going through the files I have kept since I left Windsor Court, sad that I got rid of so much of my life and family history. I still have much to remember and treasure, in words and pictures,

Among the mementoes that have survived I found two that I had forgotten. One was the first letter I wrote to Rosemary.

It was 1946 and I was home on leave. Our first date -  the Olympia  cinema in Queen Street Cardiff. It was The Little Foxes with Bette Davis, not my sort of film but that did not matter.

Next day I had to go back to Aldershot for an appointment with a consultant about my injured leg that was causing me a lot of trouble. 

In that first letter I thanked her for a lovely evening and we’ve arranged to meet when I got home again.

Over the following decades I seldom wrote to Owy except in 1971 when, on my three-month trip to Japan, I wrote an airmail almost every one of the 80 days,

Sad to say, I have kept only one of them. Rosemary did not have her own reporting career although she did some part time work, including sub editing at the South Wales Argus. She would have done well, I know.

Another unusual memento is an article she wrote in 1948 when she was a Penarth Times reporter, on journalism as a career for women.

On my frequent trips for work I never rang home and she had messages passed on by my boss, Peter Davey, who rang his wife every day. I had got out of the habit which I now regret.

But as usual, Owy got on with life, looking after Beverley and Robert and running the home

Today, reliving mementoes, those memories - almost all happy ones - I appreciate all the more how marvellous she was.