As a family historian I often search the newspapers for
obituaries but recently I’ve been looking for those of near contemporaries and
former colleagues and with online newspaper archives the search process is now
fairly easy. Obituaries in the Times or
the Guardian are really rewarding to find although whilst searching for
Cambridge mentions for a recently deceased friend I was saddened to find that I’d
missed the death of Robert Jefford, a former colleague, in 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/30/robert-jefford-obituary
74 seems so young nowadays!
I worked for him at Addenbrooke’s Hospital for only a short time
in the 1980s although I’d known him as a colleague and mentor for longer but
reading his obituary immediately conjured up a mental picture of him dressed as
an elf for the 1984 Staff Christmas lunch, reciting the poem he had written for
the occasion in his persona of the “National Elf” of the “National Elf Service”. (We were all in fancy dress it being the
tradition for management to dress up and act as waiters to the rest of the staff.) Robert Jefford with his Abraham Lincolnesque
beard really looked the part.
These kind of memories surface at funeral and memorial
services. Sitting listening to the
eulogy we often marvel how little we knew of that person and regret not knowing
them better as whole areas of their interesting life are laid bare. We may know only one aspect of a person or
perhaps only one period of their life.
Of course trying to find out all these aspects of a person after their
death is what family historians do but how much do we miss because no-one took
a photo or wrote the story down?
This is one story that has now been preserved for the future
and perhaps someone out there has a photo of the event? Although hopefully not of me – the skirt of
my costume was meant for someone shorter and I spent most of my time trying to
stay decent.
