Tribute to Eric Wright – Nov 9 1923 Dec 22 2024 aged 101
My eldest brother Eric passed away a few days before Christmas.
I am now last in line of my birth family
He will be joining his beloved wife who was interred in Brierley cemetery in February 2002, on Jan `15 2025 at 1300hrs approx.
Eric was a kind gentle soul. A gentleman. He was well liked and known in the area he had lived all his life..
He was 18 years older than me.
As a result, he often had babysitting duties. He loved to relate how he sat with his foot or feet on the pram handle, ready to rock the boat when loud screams emerged from its contents. One of his favourite stories relates to a gentleman in the village, I forget who, but it might have been Dad’s sister, Doreen’s husband, Edwin, who offered pennies to the child in the pram, who then unkindly threw them back at him. I don’t think Eric took kindly to me as a baby.
But it was Eric who was instrumental in developing my engineering interest and education. I was a keen Meccano fan, given through him at Christmas, and he always ensured that I had an upgrade every year. I never managed to get to size 10, the ultimate prize, but it was brilliant for my development as an engineer.
He was like a parent in my early teens.
I, having failed the 11+ but passing to go the Technical School at Barnsley, a bus ride or 2 away, he was always delegated for parent teacher’s evenings. He was also the one that took me to Neepsend Power Station in Sheffield, long since gone, for my 1st job interview on leaving school. That was three bus rides away. This led me to getting my 1st job in the Electrical Supply Industry based at Wakefield Power Station as a Student Engineer.
So, I do owe Eric quite a lot. It now leaves me at the end of the immediate family birth line.
Eric was born at a bad time in the twenties when life was tough – the miner’s strikes and depression in the thirties, to name but two events, deprived him of the education that he fully deserved, and he had to do things the hard way via night school, subsequently earning the qualification to start teaching as a mining instructor, a career he served faithfully to the end. I often thought he did not always get the recognition that he deserved.
In later years, in particular the early part of this century, Eric was then in his late 70’s early 80’s, when I used to come North for squash tournaments in Pontefract and Manchester, I more often than not stayed with Eric. We enjoyed many a night at the Burntwood Court Hotel and other outings, one in particular when I walked him over the Humber Bridge, him racing away on his mobile scooter. Eric and Rose were both alive when I first took them over in the car. A first for them at the time.
The photo above is from a Lester’s trip with Vivien and me to Llandudno in 2008.
Sadly outings became impracticable in his later years when in the home, because of his ailing health.
But didn’t he do well. 101years old.
Rest in Peace Eric – soon to be laid to rest with his beloved wife Rose who he lost nearly 23 years ago.
That is carved in my mind as that was the weekend that I won my first National Championship at age 60 .
Dedicated to Rose who I also loved dearly.
Brother Adrian