~ Chapter Twenty-Five ~
Illness, Retirement and Loss
Both Sue and Charlie had been heavy smokers all their lives. In 1959, Charlie developed a very unpleasant cough, for which he sought medical help. An x-ray revealed that he had a tumour in the top lobe of his right lung. He was taken to the Chest Hospital in Southampton and had an operation to remove the tumour. Ken takes up the story from there:
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In 1962, at the age of fifty-five, Charlie retired from his part-time position with the Hampshire Fire Service. He is being presented with a retirement gift in this photograph. Ten years after it was taken, he also relinquished the post of Chief Fire Officer at the Synthetic Rubber Company, but he was kept on by the company as an adviser. He eventually retired in 1977, aged seventy.
In that same year, Charlie was to lose Sue. In December 1977, at the age of seventy, she died from lung and liver cancer within days of its diagnosis. Ken describes Charlie’s relationship with Sue and how he was affected by her loss: |
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Two days before Christmas 1979, after a long and painful illness, Charlie died in Southampton General Hospital, aged seventy-two years, leaving his estate to his two sons. The final words of Charlie’s story are left to one of those sons, Ken, who pays this tribute to his father:
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