"Arthur Davies" Sad News

From: Barry Davies
Sent: 24 March 2014
Subject: Arthur Davies

Dear Webby

With sadness I must report to you the death of my father Arthur John Davies, one of your longstanding old boys.

Dad suffered a stroke at home on 22nd February and slowly weakened until he passed away at Warrington Hospital on 15th March aged 92. He will be cremated next Monday 31st March at Altrincham (Dunham Massey) crematorium at 11.30.

There follows some memories of my Dad taken from the proposed order of service for next week. If you run obituaries, you may like to use this.

"Leaving the Collegiate High School in 1937 (?), Arthur joined the GPO as a telephone engineer. In 1943 he was enlisted into the Burma Command Signal Regiment and he duly served in Burma as a Line Mechanic through the rest of the war and beyond, leaving in 1947. Arthur proceeded to work his whole life in telecoms as telephone engineer for the GPO and then BT. He moved up into management grades on the back of intensive home-based study and night school. He was able to finish working in 1981 and enjoy over 30 years in retirement.

Arthur had one over-riding passion – football. Playing, and supporting his beloved Liverpool Reds. He played for Collegiate School and then the Old Boys into his forties in the Zingari Sunday league - typically Division 8! – often wearing his specs, tied on with a piece of black knicker elastic.

Other loves included square dancing, going back to the 1960s in Liverpool. From this sort of time he was also to be seen with a movie camera, even if his film making skills left a certain amount to be desired, more often than not forgetting to turn the camera off and as a result ending up with lengthy shots of people’s feet, the floor, the ceiling, etc.

More recently Arthur was a keen member of the Town Twinning society in Lymm, with many friends made in France and Cheshire. He was also a member of Probus and the Day Care Luncheon Club. He loved to garden until it became too much for him.

One thing he never lost was his sense of humour – as you would expect of a scouser. In the hospital ward in Warrington having been hit by the severe stroke which had paralysed his side and badly affected his speech, he was being asked some questions:

Nurse: “Date of birth?”
Arthur: “4th”
Nurse: “what month?”
Arthur: “June”
Nurse: “what year”
Arthur: “Every year….”

That was Arthur, a joker to the end."

Kind Regards

Barry Davies

Dear Barry - This is one of those occasions, where I feel realy, realy, guilty - Due to my incompetance, I have managed to let this letter get mislaid for 6 months - It is a common story really - OUTLOOK put this email into the wrong 'Input' folder and I should have been checking to make sure that my system could not let this happen :-( - On giving my PC a spring clean (in August), this email appeared on my screen - Sorry - Sorry - Sorry.

This is particularly galling to me as I would have attended the funeral, (And, I'm sure, other COBs) if this hadn't happened - I played in the COB 5th team for about a season and a half, with Arthur as Captain - This was probably the happiest time of all my (COB) football career - Arthur had a couple of occasions to frown at me and I throughly deserved it.

BTW - There was a picture of the 5th team in the Newsletter, a few years ago - If you haven't got a copy of it, I will "move Heaven and Earth" to rustle one up, for you, if you don't already have a copy :-)

I hope (and expect) that we do get some letters from other COB Footballers - The names Arnold Kaney and "Denny" Wilson (sometime known as Frank) spring to mind.  I hope that more of the COB Footballers are in good health and can manage to send in a few lines of memories of wins, draws and Losses.

BTW - We will be using the main gist of your letter, in our Obituary section - To view this, please click on this LINK - If you would like to amend this, in any way, please don't hesitate to send an email to :-

webmaster@liverpool-collegiate.org.uk

Best wishes - Webby