DAD
Gordon Edwin Gandy, Dad, or as mum affectionately called him: ‘G’, was born in Back Dallam Lane near the Three Pigeons pub on 9 July 1928.
He spent a lot of his early childhood with his granny and attended Richard Fairclough School, leaving at 15.
With the earnings from his paper round he bought himself ‘a really decent bike’, and he would ride off to Wales for the weekend with his mates.
One of his first jobs was at Newton’s scrap yard where he was supposed to be training as an accountant, but they just had him delivering letters on a bike for six months so he gave that up.
At 16½ he had two trials for Wigan Athletic Football Club and they wanted to sign him up when he was 17, but his dad refused to sign the forms on religious grounds, so he went to live with his mum in London, who had separated from his dad by this time
He tried to get onto the railways but his colour-blindness let him down, as did a perforated eardrum, which also stopped him joining the forces.
He came back to Warrington when he was 20 after receiving a letter saying his dad was suffering from cancer, who died in 1950 aged just 49.
He also worked at Richmonds – The Radiation – where he got his passion for cricket. Dad was a lover of all sports and in later life played flat green bowls for England. He also worked on the buses (Crosville and the Corporation, five years on each).
When he was 25 he developed a lung abscess, which resulted in a long hospital stay. It was around this time that he met mum – she was 21. Their first date was a night at the flicks – the Empire Picture House – in June 1953. Mum and Dad were married in 1957 when Dad was 29, and Mum was 25.
Another one of his jobs was as a labourer. He worked for a company called Edwards who had a contract to help construct one of the runways at Speke airport, now Liverpool John Lennon Airport.
He also drove wagons for Chadwick’s paper bag company in Howley, with many trips to Yorkshire on the A62 without power steering as he once said (no M62 then).
In 1963 he began working at Greenings Wire Works, where he gave 17 years service until the firm went bust in 1980. He was one of the boilermen towards the end.
Dad was a volunteer for St John Ambulance and attended many of the Warrington rugby games at Wilderspool Stadium to assist with first aid, working alongside the doctors and other medical staff.
He was active in retirement – he loved fishing and gardening. During his other leisure time he played darts and snooker, winning many trophies along the way.
He also did a bit as a compere at Whitecross social club in his time. He had a good singing voice – I’ll show these pop stars a thing or two, he’d often say. One of his favourite gags was to ask someone to take a button round to Mrs Jones and ask her to sew a shirt on it!
Dad at a Whitecross Community Centre Christmas dinner singing My Way by Frank Sinatra
Later he and mum became members of the Help the Needy Over Sixties club at Whitecross Centre, where dad was treasurer for a brief period under my tuition.
Technology was not his thing. One of the funniest stories was when he rang his sister in the Netherlands – but he could never get past the answer phone message – he always used to hang up before the bleep, saying it’s all in Dutch!
Our Mum, Joyce, always called him Second Hand Gandy – you want it, I’ll make you one. He once made us the best kite ever out of brown paper and string when the plastic one he bought us at Trearddur Bay broke. He also made a deluxe kitchen window opener made out of Greenings wire!
But despite all his illnesses he never gave up. He went with me to the rugby matches shown on Sky at the pub every week. He also watched Warrington Town football club and Bank Quay Bulls rugby team on Dallam Park.
I always remember a time when dad attended one of my series of Warrington talks in the community a few weeks before he died when he said, “I can’t say I understand the technology (laptop and projector, etc.), but I am so proud of your achievements”.
He said,” I could never understand why you did your church work, your over-sixties work and this history project while I played sport in my life, but now I do understand,” he said. “I like your passion for what you do.”
It ties in with the time 15 years earlier when I stepped down from my work at Help the Needy Over Sixties Club. I knew I was receiving a Badge of Honour and thank you for that work, but didn’t know mum and dad were to be in the audience. He said a similar thing there too.
Dad always played jokes on us kids. One was saying he had a pen that would write any colour we wanted. I said “blue” and dad wrote B-L-U-E!
Dad with his mum in Holland in 2006
He fulfilled three ambitions in retirement – one was to fly (he visited his mum in the Netherlands). Another was to see the Tower of London and the Crown Jewels (I took him there the year before he died). The third was to see the Edinburgh Military Tattoo (which he did as part of his and mum’s Golden Wedding celebrations in 2007).
Dad sat down with me to record some of his memories of living in Warrington. I will add those memories to the website in due course.
A card trick dad did for us kids was to tell us a story about some robbers escaping from the police. He showed us the four Jack cards to represent the robbers and convinced us we had seen him stick them in the middle of the pack. Then the police went in through the ‘front door’ (four other cards in through the ‘front door’ and the conclusion to the story was that as the four police went in the front door, the robbers came out the back door – he then turned over the last four cards from the bottom of the pack to reveal the four jacks coming ‘out of the house’. All slight of hand of course but he did it so well and so quickly that we were convinced it was the real Jacks he had put in the pack, when in fact they were four of the other cards in the pack and the Jacks were always at the bottom. Of course, he could have used two sets of Jacks and we would have been none the wiser.
on 21 January 2008, Dad, Gordon Edwin Gandy, died at home, aged 79. His mum outlived him, dying at the age of 101 in 2010.
Dad with me at the first Warrington Wolves match at the Halliwell Jones Stadium on 21 Feb 2004. Warrington Wolves defeated the Wakefield Trinity Wildcats 34-20.
My Mate – what dad always called Frank Carson because everybody said they look like each other! I’d like to think they’re both up there now swapping jokes – that’s if dad can get a word in!
Where dad spent many a moment sat on his garden chair.
MUM
Joyce Gandy, mum and grandma, was born at 8 West Street, Orford, Warrington on Saturday 18 June 1932 to parents Harold and Lillian Clapham.
Mum was educated at Bewsey School and worked at Greenings wire factory on Bewsey Road soon after leaving school at the age of 14.
Mum met her future husband Gordon Edwin Gandy when she was aged 21 and he was 25. Dad at the time had a long stay in hospital due to a lung abscess.
Their first date was a night at the flicks – the Empire Picture House on Buttermarket Street in June 1953, and Mum described it as love at first sight.
They arranged to meet again for another night out together, but mum wasn’t sure if she would recognise her sweetheart, but she needn’t have worried because when they met up she knew instantly it was him and was in no doubt after that.
A four-year courtship led to their wedding day at St Paul’s Church on Bewsey Road on Saturday 27 July 1957. One funny story of that day was when dad was late getting there and mum had to be driven round the block a few times and mum jokingly said to me your dad’s been driving me round the bend ever since!
On one occasion Dad had said to mum, I have seen a lovely brown coat in a shop and I am going to buy it for you. But of course, dad was colour-blind. The coat was in fact pillar-box RED! Mum had a laugh about it later. Dad was also her Second-Hand Gandy – anything mum wanted, dad would make it for her! We still have her deluxe window opener – a strip of Greenings wire with the end bent over!
Gran and grandad lived on Gerrard Avenue in Bewsey and mum and dad lived on the opposite side of the road for a while before moving to 13 St Peter’s Place after a short period in Penketh. It was a small two up two down terraced house with a coal bunker and an outside toilet with newspaper on a string to compliment it.
Mum stopped work in 1959 to have her first child, my older sister, while dad was working on the buses. Then in 1963, I was born, followed by my brother and younger sister later in the decade. We had lots of caravan holidays together, especially in North Wales on Anglesey. John Denver’s Country Roads song was a favourite singalong on those Welsh journeys. Now, if you are a regular follower of the mywarrington website, you will be aware of the Winwick Pig story. Well, Trearddur Bay, Anglesey had it’s own pig – as I found out to my cost on one of those holidays. Let me fill you in.
We were playing outside the caravan as mum and dad were doing some work in the caravan when we discovered a pig had escaped from the local farm and was chasing me around the caravan park. Well, everybody was surprised that I wasn’t invited to the 1972 Olympics because I ran away from that pig as fast as I could and jumped into the caravan without touching the step, ending up under the table. You’d never seen me move so fast. And I’m still waiting for my gold medal from the Olympics committee!
Other holiday memories from later years include when Mum and Dad with my younger siblings went to Tenby in a beige-coloured car that dad had hired, and they all ended up coming back on the train because the car had broke down.
Mum and dad and the four of us moved to Dallam in 1972 – 24 July to be precise, and the two-up-two-down terraced house was replaced by a three-bedroom semi with front and back gardens, TWO inside toilets and a bathroom.
In 1977 we had a party at St Anselm’s Church in Dallam for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Mum bought me and my brother a jubilee shirt and Mrs Bennett, Gordon’s wife – yes, we really did have Gordon Bennett as a neighbour! – organised the party.
When us kids had grown up a bit, mum went back to work and spent 26 wonderful years at Warrington Transport Club on Longshaw Street, many of those years under Ronny and Jessie Emson. Jessie was more a friend than a boss and mum enjoyed her time there. One of mum’s jobs was to bring the bar mats and towels home each week to wash and mum was still using a Hoover twin tub washing machine and after those 26 years when mum retired, the club members felt it was time to bring mum into the 20th century by buying her a fully automatic washer. Of course, mum was terrified at the thought of using it in case she pressed the wrong button and broke it! It was delivered while she was on holiday in the Netherlands with dad visiting his mum and once I had shown mum how to use it she never looked back.
After retirement mum joined Whitecross over 60s club with dad and enjoyed many holidays and day trips as a result with dad. Mum was always happy at home working in the kitchen and doing the usual household tasks but after dad passed away in 2008 mum seemed lost without him. They had celebrated their Golden Wedding the year before, but mum now began to slow down, both physically and emotionally. She had diabetes from 1999. Things went okay at first. We used to take mum for her appointments at Hollins Park hospital in Winwick to check on progress. One thing that always fascinated me was when mum was asked to draw the hands, face and numbers of a clock and always started at 12, then 11, 10, etc.
For the last couple of years of her life I took on the roll of main carer. Mum had requested to be cared for at home and I promised that would be the case, unless it became impossible to do so. So carers were appointed to assist me and also to perform tasks in line with the legislation, including lifting aids and a hospital bed at home. From June 2016 until mid-October, mum was cared for in her home by the wonderful staff from Allied Healthcare. Mum was extremely pleased with the high quality of care and for the input towards myself too.
Even during her later years, despite her illness, mum kept her sense of humour. During 2014 I had noticed mum getting a bit forgetful and after a diagnosis at Hollins Park it was confirm that mum had the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease. To prepare for mum’s future months and years I attended a training course to enable me to understand how to care for mum during the deterioration in her memory. While the carers were moving mum up the bed on slide sheets, mum developed a counting system of her own to prepare her for the moment. One-two-three and move. But then mum added something extra to the mix with the addition of two-and-a-half, then three. Of course the carers and me were totally surprised by this and just fell about laughing. And then later on when they were expecting the two-and-a-half, mum missed it out and went straight to three, thus confirming her sense of humour. And considering the pain she was in she never complained about anything. And it was nice to hear mum in the hospital ask me if I was ok, despite all her troubles and pain.
Gran and Grandad Clapham (mum’s parents) in 1962
It was sad to see mum deteriorate in the final two years. When the Alzheimer’s was at its worse, mum asked if I was Gordon or when was Gordon coming home. Even asking me who I was at one time. But it was also an absolute pleasure to keep mum at home and to provide the 24-hour care she needed. She had requested not to be sent into a home because, in her words, she wouldn’t last five minutes in a place like that. And apart from the 13 days she spent in hospital I had managed to grant that wish.
A week before mum died she was thanking each of the four of us children for what we had done for her and told us that she loved us. And on the following Sunday was saying to me “No more” and “It is finished, you can leave me alone now”.
Another memory was when mum worked at Warrington Transport Club on a Sunday. I used to walk down to help clear glasses and was given a glass of coke as a reward. Another time, when the government took pension books away and started direct payments into bank accounts, I helped mum to sort out the family finances, some of which were through the bank, some in cash. Once mum got used to the new way of doing things she enjoyed doing all that stuff, just like she did when everything was done in cash.
One final memory of mum: when mum and dad flew to Holland to see dad’s mum, we were thinking it might be mum who would be the nervous first time flier. Actually it was dad.
Mum with me on the 1964 Japanese Bullet train at York Railway Museum on 20 October 2006.
On Wednesday 19 October 2016 at 9.30pm, mum, grandma, Joyce Gandy passed away peacefully in her sleep. She is now reunited with her husband, Gordon Edwin Gandy.
One lovely touch from Warrington Hospital is to place a picture of a butterfly outside a patient’s room so all staff (doctors, nurses, cleaning staff, etc) know the occupant is receiving end of life care. Thank you.
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