My Memories of Harry Wilson
The President in 1958 was Harry Wilson. He was a builder in South Ockendon. I had known Harry for some time. He was not a founder member, but came in the first year. He was brought in by John Challis. I did not get to know him for some time, but in 1939 he came to me with his father when I lived in Corbets Tey Road, saying war was likely to break out, so I had a shelter built in the garden. Harry was a real character. Everybody knew him. Wherever we went, everybody knew Harry. He was terribly keen on sport and pretty good at most of them. Most snooker competitions were held on Harry Wilson’s snooker table. Quite a few things happened in his year because he was very popular. He had a very successful year. A lot of the members of the Club will know him, because he lived into his 90’s. He hardly every missed a meeting. He had a tremendous attendance record and he built the Roomes building that they have just knocked down. He also built the church hall at St. Andrews Hornchurch. In fact, he got to know the vicar of St. Andrews and brought him into Rotary.
The new vicar at St. Andrew’s Church was Dick Watson, and Harry brought him into the Rotary Club. He was a great asset to the Club and a very nice fellow. They eventually built the new hall at St. Andrew’s while Dick was there. We got very friendly with him and he used to get a large number of youngsters there to the evening service. He was not a good speaker, but a good organiser. He wasn’t President, of course, but he became the Bishop of Burnley. Jean and I went to see him inducted. It was in the middle of the winter. It was at Liverpool and snowing hard. We shall never forget. We saw Dick later on. He was at Burnley a number of years and then retired. He went to live in Thame, Oxfordshire.
We saw him there because that was where our daughter Alison was living. He came to her second wedding and it was very nice. I saw him once more, but he had a heart attack at the reception of her wedding. We took him home and saw to him. He got over that, but he took Jean and me to the Rotary Club where we had lunch. Shortly after that he had another heart attack and died. His wife Hannah was very nice, but was almost blind. She was in Inner Wheel.
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