I met my husband,
He was an acting pilot officer in the
Royal Air Force, and I was a student.
We were both students,
as soon as we finished our final exams.
We were both at Oxford,
Our first son was actually christened
so that was always a lovely connection.
And in many years down the line,
So we've always felt that was a nice
and they were kind enough to actually put
of Christchurch Cathedral.
So it's a nice connection for us all.
But on the 16th of August,
1990, my life changed forever.
We had been married for 22 years, and Bill
was killed in a crash over the North Sea.
We never got his body back,
dramatic time as well as his death was
and in grief, proof is quite important,
important for my children.
But at the time, the navigator in the tornado,
they were just all preparing
My husband had been appointed the Tornado
So this was a real shock for everyone.
But the widow of the navigator had never
My situation was very different.
Bill, for most of his career had been
of the Harrier, we had sadly lost a lot
and I'd been quite involved
probably thought I knew what it was like.
When it happened to me,
that there can be no rehearsal for how
But those friends and ladies were
metaphorically or physically rushed
and what I didn't have to do,
It was therefore very obvious
as to how different my position was
to Caroline's position,
we have widows able to support widows.
And that was one of the driving
the RAF Widows Association.
The other was that when it happened to me,
people, and there were lots of problems,
And I thought, how can things not
And it dawned on me that they didn't
no feedback to the RAF.
Because although they gave you a very nice
nice last post and maybe a fly past,
You were effectively
Your station pass was taken off you.
And in the nicest possible way,
the station because I think they thought
Now, for my generation that had been
service wives in the '70s and the '80s,
a service wife in the '20s.
Nearly everybody lived on base.
Our life centred around the base.
Our children went to the
We were enrolled with the station doctor.
Our social life,
around whichever mess you belong to.
And you could become very isolated
So when you had to move off a station,
you could become very disorientated.
There was very little...
To start again, you had to find
You had to sign up
The local postman was different.
The local shop was different.
You used to shop in the
So it was a huge, what I call
You not only lost your husband,
immediate circle of neighbours and friends
But also service life in those days,
of overseas spaces,
A lot of employers didn't
because they knew you kept going off.
But also, if your husband was going
they were asked that you would not work
accompany them because the senior
There was no formal RAF Welfare Service.
And wives were expected
run the bits of the NAAFI,
the younger wives, the more junior wives.
And that formed a bond between everybody.
But it did mean that very,
a career, and that meant And that you
a career to go straight back into.
Teaching always worked well because you
family, and a lot of us were teachers.
But it meant also that you hadn't
And these arguments were very important
and pushing for improvements
to keep your pension for life,
Those things were really important.
But it was so important to me that
They needed to understand what
didn't know because they didn't have
And once you left the station,
And so we wanted to work with them.
I wrote to all the widows I knew,
they tended to be air crew because
And I wrote to them and I said,
out some of the problems we've all faced?
And if you think this is a good idea,
else you know who may want to join in?
And people wrote back.
They all wrote back saying,
going to do something.
And so 25 of us met at RAF Amport House,
which was the Chaplain's School in
May 1992.
You have to have a bit of luck sometimes.
And I had some luck
Sir Roger Palin,
And I didn't know him at the time,
him to come along to that weekend.
He didn't come,
whose brief it was, was to listen
After that, wing commander
Sir Roger was so horrified
to Rutland and spend a day with me.
And we chatted and chatted, and we
And following that,
form a proper formal association so
that the RAF could work properly with us,
but we needed to form
So we formed an independent,
was really important to us.
A couple of the major service charities
would be better placed as part of them,
needed our independence so that we could
whether we had a voice,
we no longer were confined
We had nothing to lose.
We just had things that we
And so that was
how we set about forming
