Remembrances Archives - Page 5 of 6

Celwyn Ball, British First Army 1940-46

14 July 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Celwyn 1922-2016

In 1992, I told Celwyn of my Latvian forebears and wish to visit the Baltic. He said he knew the area well, volunteered to join me, and made arrangements for a tour. Generously he showed me places I never expected to see. I remember our strolling Bralu Kapi, Latvia’s Arlington, where heroes lie. There I heard Celwyn musing, from his own experience, about what they must have gone through. A veteran had told us of digging ditches in the flat country, against oncoming Russian tanks, in 1945 as the Red Army rolled west. They were Shermans sent through Lend-Lease, their white stars recently repainted red.…

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Grace Hamblin, Total Churchillian

31 October 2015 Comments 0 Comments

Remembering Grace: 1908-2002

Beloved by all Churchills, Grace Hamblin died at her home in Westerham, Kent, aged 94. Aware she was ailing, I had just sent her some little thing in the post; Carole Kenwright at Chartwell said it arrived in time, and she was able to read from it for a few minutes.

Grace Hamblin was the longest serving and most loyally devoted of Churchill’s inner circle, arriving at Chartwell in 1932 as an assistant to then-principal private secretary Violet Pearman. She spent virtually her entire career as private secretary, first to Winston and from 1939 to Clementine. In 1966 she became the first Administrator of Chartwell, serving through 1973. In…

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The Duke of Marlborough 1926-2014

15 October 2015 Comments 3 Comments

The Long Library at Blenheim is dominated by an 1891 Henry Willis organ, which bears a poignant legend: “In memory of happy days & as a tribute to this glorious home, we leave thy voice to speak within these walls in years to come, when ours are still.” The 11th Duke went to his rest knowing that his great work to preserve and protect a Churchillian monument goes on under his trustees. I am confident that his voice will speak through their example, in years to come, when ours are still.

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Sir Martin Gilbert CBE, 1936-2015 (2)

4 February 2015 Comments 1 Comment

The time you won your town the race, We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down,Townsman of a stiller town. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up, The still-defended challenge-cup. —Housman

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Sir Martin Gilbert CBE, 1936-2015 (1)

4 February 2015 Comments 2 Comments

Each one of us recalls some little incident—many of us, as in my own case, a kind action, graced with the courtesy of a past generation and going far beyond the normal calls of comradeship. Each of us has his own memory, for in the tumultuous diapason of the world's tributes, all of us here at least know the epitaph he would have chosen for himself: "He was a noble historian, a kind and decent man."

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Churchill’s Funeral, 50 Years On: His Words Still Call to Us

26 January 2015 Comments 0 Comments

In the time since his funeral I learned that Churchill’s life and thought—the eerie relevancy of his challenges and experiences—still call to us across the years. There will always be scoffers, who portray him as an anachronism. “In doing so, it is they who are the losers,” Martin Gilbert concluded, “for he was a man of quality: a good guide for our troubled present, and for the generations now reaching adulthood.”

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Bill Tilden 1935-2013: Tribute to a Friend

20 December 2013 Comments 1 Comment

Time is running out and I haven’t told you the half of it: of cruising the Packard Proving Grounds at 140 in Bill’s E-type (ka-pow! went one of his Atlas Bucrons; we stopped to find a fist-sized hole in the tread), or in his retrofitted stick-overdrive Packard Caribbean; touring the bars and dives of the Florida panhandle, in search of some old automotive duffer; entertaining Austin Clark at the Dearborn Inn; Bill driving Brooks Stevens’ Excaliburs at Indy; meandering Hershey looking for Nash dealer signs….

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The Dodgers’ Immortal Vin Scully

14 May 2013 Comments 0 Comments

Vin Scully, voice of the L.A. Dodgers a throwback to the golden age, called his first game for Brooklyn in 1950—and is still at it.

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“The Truth is Great, and Shall Prevail”: Bill Rusher 1923-2011

24 June 2011 Comments 0 Comments

I" know we have a tendency to be discouraged about how things are going—although in our time, you know, they haven't gone all that badly. Free market economics, which I wouldn't have given you a plugged nickel for at the end of World War II, is now so popular that even Red China calls its policy "Market Socialism," whatever that is. Still there is much that is worrisome. I'm sure Churchill, if he were here, would encourage us: Never Despair and Never Give In." —Bill Rusher

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Arrington McCardy 1947-2011

12 April 2011 Comments 3 Comments

Self-trained, he had unorthodox techniques. On a steep hill, the standard tactic is to shift up two cogs and stand up, adding your body weight to the downstroke, using your arms to wiggle the bike from side to side to help the upstroke. We never saw Arrington stand. Instead he would hunker down in the saddle and simply power his way over the hill. And he always left us in the dust. I was hoping to watch this technique in the White Mountains when he and Hazel were to visit us in New Hampshire.

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