~ 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:
In those days, the operation was undertaken by having the patient in an upright position and then being cut from the chest and armpit across his back to the left kidney.  The arm was hoisted up on a winch so that the complete lobe could be removed from a gap between the top of the ribs and underneath the shoulder blade.  This was a rather horrendous operation and left a huge scar, and there was the usual after-operation chemotherapy, but he survived it all.  He then became determined that he would never smoke again.  For five years, he quit smoking completely and was always seen chewing nuts or peppermints, but he constantly hankered after a cigarette, saying he didn't know what to do with his fingers now that he wasn't holding one.  One day, he couldn't hold out any longer, the addiction caught up with him and he started smoking again, this time with a vengeance.
Picture
            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:
Charlie was very well liked by the men under his command because he was not only fair, he would never ask them to do what he wouldn't do himself.  On the downside, he was also well known as being a ladies’ man and prone to often flirt with persons of the opposite sex.  This tended to upset Sue and, quite obviously, it caused severe rifts in their relationship.  However, despite this, their marriage survived almost 50 years.

             After her death, he became absolutely bereft and completely introspective.  He often said that he wished he had been a better husband.  Inevitably, because he was quite an attractive man, he met another lady, a widow, and they talked about getting married.  This lifted his deep depression somewhat, but when she found out that he was suffering from the first signs of terminal lung cancer, she immediately walked out on him.
            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:
Charlie was highly thought of as a good leader and organiser and a first class fire officer.  As an illustration of this, when he died there were over 70 people at his funeral and amongst the mourners were many senior fire officers from all over the country - some of whom he had trained - a senior representative from the Home Office, and members of the Board from the International Synthetic Rubber Company, the factory from which he had retired, aged 70.

             He was also a good, hard working, supportive husband and father and a helpful and loving friend to his grandchildren.  He is sorely missed by his family who have very fond memories of him.