Roxy and Ray Base

During the past two years, we have lost these two long-term members of the Society.

Roxy played such an important part in the Society’s history.  We inherited her as [then unknown to me] a founder of Tewkesbury U3A and we benefitted so much from her talents.  She took on the very difficult role of Chairman [a term always at Roxy’s insistence] after my retirement as founding Chairman. She was always a tour de force but with very successful diplomatic skills and because of this I felt we were in very good hands.  Even when she retired as Chairman, she acted as Editor of the THS Bulletin for Volumes 9-13, when her computing and secretarial skills enabled her to re-edit our Founding Bulletin 1 in a much-appreciated modern format. Even after retiring, yet again, we had the infinite benefit of her becoming the proof-reader for subsequent volumes and we rightly named her the D.A.P.R. – the Dreaded Anonymous Proof Reader!  We certainly had no complaints about spelling or grammatical errors.  That tradition was continued even when she did finally retire!  It was at that point when she was rightly elected as one of the Society’s five Life Members.

The epithet anonymous was very appropriate as she never wanted overt appreciation – which we wanted to give.  Léonie Roxana Base (née Wilkinson) was born in Harrogate at her grand parents’ home, but moved to 103 Brooklyn Road, Cheltenham.  She was initially educated at Christchurch School, Malvern Road - for 1 day only as “they made all the children lie down in the afternoon instead of lessons, so I refused to go back”.  She was whisked away to a private school and, “while doing sums I could hear the Latin lesson going on, so learned amo–amas–amat at an early age!”.  That benefitted our proof-reader - and her rebellious nature continued at Pates Grammar School. She was then “studying for Higher School Cert with languages (English, Latin, French & German) and possible University, but upped and left after a disagreement with the German teacher. (I’d been off with jaundice for weeks and had not kept up with the necessary bookwork.) A bad decision that affected my whole life!”.  We benefitted, however, from her choice of a Secretarial Course at North Glos. Technical School, at the Park, but she had to be patient before gaining her BA with the Open University in 1983.  I only discovered that after we made her a Life Member!