A Eulogy for William (Bill) Henry Hart, 1935-2021
by Stephen Hart
On 4th May 1935 at St. Thomas’s Hospital in Lambeth, a baby boy was born to parents Dorothy and Henry William Hart. In keeping with a Hart family tradition of alternating the Christian names of male first-borns over generations, he was accordingly given the name William Henry Hart – my own name really should therefore have been ‘Henry William’, but I think Mum had strong opinions about that – it turns out that Mum’s own Grandfather, AND great grandfather, were also christened William Henry, so I think she felt enough was enough!
Dad’s immediate home was a one-bed flat in Battersea, but the young family moved soon after to nearby Wandsworth, where he would spend his early childhood. It wasn’t long before he was nicknamed ‘Bill’…William apparently being too posh for ‘Wandsworf’. He was joined in 1937 by new baby Sister Edna, and in 1939 by Dorothy’s Sister Laura, who continued to live with the family for several decades, known by us all simply as ‘Aunt’.
The young family survived WW2, despite being made temporarily homeless after their council house block was bombed out during the Blitz, and Dad very narrowly escaping a V2 rocket landing 100yds from the cinema he was in at the time. Dad describes in his own biographical records how whilst running home from the devastation of this explosion (which killed 17 people) he encountered his own father (who was a Post Warden stationed nearby) running towards the scene to help. It does sound like a scene from a fictional drama, I can’t begin to imagine the feelings and emotions in that meeting of father and son.
Brother Neil arrived shortly after the war in 1946, and this was to complete the Hart family unit. That same year Dad started at Battersea Grammar School, where he was to forge so many enduring friendships. Based on test results he was put straight into the 2nd year in a school that was already experimenting with compressing three years into two. Although he still managed to progress academically, he always considered this to have been unhelpful in his early adolescence. However, as he put it, he was “able to mark time in the Lower Sixth and fill in the inevitable gaps left by the ‘rushing'”.
In 1953 he began studies at the Chelsea School of Pharmacy, going on to pass his graduate apprenticeship at Boots in 1956. The next 2 years were taken up by a National Service posting to Shoeburyness, and after a brief stint in industrial pharmacy he embarked on a longer-term carrier on the retail side. It was during his first role as Assistant Manager at a pharmacy in London SW1 that he met my Mum Gillian – the two were married in Harrow-on-the-Hill in 1961 and in November ‘62 moved from a one-bed flat in Stanmore to their first owned home, a very nice semi-detached house in Kenton, Middlesex bought for £4,100 with a mortgage of £3,736. This was just in time for the notorious Winter of ‘62/’63, so they were snowed in for prolonged periods – somewhat predictably almost exactly 9 months later their first child arrived! Although I was born there, I have no memories of Kenton, because in ‘65 we moved to a bungalow in Shepperton, Middlesex. Suzanne was born in this house 2 years later.
In 1972 whilst working as Pharmacy Superintendent for a group of 3 shops in Mitcham, he was recruited by the pharmaceuticals wholesalers UniChem, with whom he went on to have a successful and fulfilling career until retirement on his 59th birthday, having reached board level as Marketing Director.
In 1999, with both children having left the nest, Mum & Dad took the big decision to leave behind the Middlesex/Surrey area where they’d spent their married lives so far, and move to Kenilworth Warwickshire, an area they had fallen in love with whilst visiting Sally Ann & myself when we were studying at Warwick University.
These are the summarised facts of Dad’s life, but I would like to say a few words about him as a person and a father.
For my formative years, Dad cut a pretty heroic figure. Seemingly successful in everything he put his mind to do, as well as being gregarious, popular, a good bloke. Very competitive with a winning mentality, he didn’t want to just be a team player, he wanted to be a first-team player, and he usually was.
He felt a real pride in his own achievements; sporting, personal and professional, but it wasn’t at all a conceit. He was no braggard; he would just look back on these achievements and feel really pleased and grateful that he had possessed the abilities and opportunities to reach them.
I have such fond memories of watching him play sport, particularly cricket and can still feel the excitement and pride I experienced when the South Hampstead slip cordon would noisily erupt after yet another nick to the keeper off Bill Hart’s opening spell. Dad’s ‘owzat’ appeal was legendary, if a little embarrassing to the family.
Then, of course, after cricket came golf. In the 70s after hanging up his whites he threw himself into golf with all the gusto he’d shown in his youth sports, holding club captain position at West Surrey GC, and then after moving to Warwickshire becoming a committee member at Coventry GC. Only two years ago he achieved one of the sport’s ‘holy grails’ which is to ‘shoot your age’ – at the age of 84 he completed a competition round in 83 shots – I know this gave him at least as much satisfaction as all his other sporting achievements.
Dad had always been remarkably healthy – many people have used the word ‘indestructible’ to describe how he seemed. It felt all the more surprising then when he started to experience some serious health issues a couple of years ago. I spoke with him about his mortality several times and I would usually remind him that, having already reached well into his 80s and, together with Mum having helped guarantee secure futures for his children and their families, he had basically already ‘won life’, and everything else was a bonus.
Over the last few years, Dad had taken to ringing me quite often for I.T. help. Usually little things, easy to advise on or log in to his PC remotely and fix – I really loved being able to help him out, and he was always so grateful. He had a habit, though, of calling at what sometimes felt like inconvenient times, often during evening meals, and I would remind myself that I would miss those calls when they were gone…and, of course, I already do.
Dad was ‘proper old school’ in his values and beliefs: loyalty, decency & integrity. In truth, words like ‘equality’, ‘inclusion’, ‘social justice’, weren’t really in his vocabulary which did infuriate me from time to time as I got older and more aware of the wider world. The fact is he was a product of his generational experiences, and on occasions it became safer really to just ‘not go there’.
I know how immensely proud he was of his children and grandchildren Ellen, William, Molly and Poppy – he delighted in observing how the grandchildren appeared to have inherited his own values of honesty & integrity but also Mum’s empathy and sensitivity, quite the combination.
He was a real lover of History, especially the war years. He once gave a talk at his granddaughter Molly’s school on life in the Blitz. It gave him great joy to talk about it and bring to life for a new generation his experiences of living through that period as a child.
From time to time in recent years Dad would visit to watch me play cricket, something he would often travel miles to do, even though I was already in my 50s and only playing 3rd team village level. During one visit, he joined Sally Ann and I and Ellen and Will and their partners, for a local pub lunch. As usual he loved holding court, the Grandad banter, and particularly that time being educated in mysterious new slang words like ‘peng’ and ‘dench’ that he would try to memorise so he could drop some ‘street’ into conversations later at the golf club.
In 2008 Suzanne gave Mum & Dad record books to fill in details of their past and their hopes & dreams for the future – looking through them now is obviously very moving. One of the pages asks them “What would you like your epitaph to say?”. To this, Dad had suggested “He was a decent human being, a good family man, and a good friend”. Well Dad, in the language of your grandchildren’s generation, you absolutely smashed it!