Eulogy for Elizabeth Rosemary Ann Smith – “Ann”
11 March 1930 to 18 March 2025
Mum lived most of her early life in Egypt. The daughter of a shipping agent based on the Suez Canal. She spent part of the World War two years with family in South Africa. She was educated in Egypt at a French speaking primary school and then moved to the English School Cairo followed by some time at Cheltenham Ladies College. She worked briefly as a secretary for Shell in London before returning to Egypt where she met her husband (our dad) when he was posted to Egypt with Cable and Wireless. They were married there in 1955. They didn’t hang around as Christopher was born in May 1956. Mum left Egypt by ship with three-month-old Christopher because of worries about the brewing Suez crisis. Dad followed 5 months later.
Her married life through to 1973 consisted of postings with Dad to various exotic off beat locations round the world interspersed with periods of home leave in the UK. I was born in one of the home breaks in 1959. So, after Egypt came north Brazil and life beside a beach for two years; then she went to the Azores and spent three years on the island of Fayal, probably the most pleasant of all to live in; after that she spent two and a half years in Doha in Qatar and then three years in Barbados.
After Barbados, Dad got a Head Office job. We all moved to a commuter belt town in Surrey called Ash Vale where we stayed until Dad’s retirement in 1983. Mum had more time for herself after Chris and after I went to boarding school in the late 1960’s. She got a part time job with a local solicitor, elderly Mr Hickman, when in Ash Vale. She made a deep and lasting impression with him. So much so that she was remembered in his will.
On retirement Mum and Dad moved to a completely new life in the countryside in the little Worcestershire village of Great Comberton where we are now. She lived very happily there with Dad for over thirty years. It was only latterly (2019 onwards) that old age really started to catch up and some things became much more of a challenge.
In many ways Mum’s early life was quite exotic and unusual. Social life as a young English woman in 1950’s Egypt was likely quite glamorous. She shared this with her sister Morwenna. They both married “company men” from Cable and Wireless.
Life as a young mother, cut off from much of the normal support and modern comforts in northern Brazil would have been exciting and challenging. Other locations were more comfortable but equally out of one’s normal comfort zone.
Mum was always the organiser and planner. She was very sociable in a friendly unassuming way. She cared deeply for Christopher and me. She extended that care to her sister’s family and others such as Aunt Mariel. Of Mum’s many qualities, I have inherited only very few but funnily one that comes immediately to mind is a love of reading and books in general.
Mum lived in a time and place where not many women had careers, but she did put her talents to good use as a mother and wife, in voluntary work, involvement in the community and in her friendships. Most notable being her friend Hazel whom she met in the Azores in the 1950’s but kept in touch with until the time of her death.
When she moved to Great Comberton, a completely new phase of life started for Mum and Dad. They integrated into village life earning the friendship and respect of many local people. I think they had had more than enough of foreign travel by then and never left the UK again. Keeping in contact with friends and relatives, Women’s Institute, Great Comberton Flower Show, Canal Boating, trips to Wales and the West Country – those were the things she wanted to engage with.
That is a very brief synopsis of Mum’s life, but it does not do it justice. By necessity, Chrisopher and I went to boarding school from an early age, then went on to university. We both moved out of the family home after that to live independently. There are lots of aspects of her life which I know very little about. Some will be lost to posterity, other memories will rest with some of you here today. Christopher and I hope that you can share some of them, by joining us afterwards at the Queen Elizabeth Inn.