Dad's Funeral is at 2.30 on Friday 12th April at the Memorial Chapel of the Surry and Sussex Crematorium.  If you would like to view the service online, you can access the webcast by clicking on this link: https://www.wesleymedia.co.uk/webcast-view and applying the Login PIN 240-7501

A Copy of the Eulogy for Dad which will be Read by his Son, Robin Dodridge

98 years, that’s quite a life to walk you through.  But, the warmth and respect that Dad earned is demonstrated by so many of taking the trouble to attend today and I’d like to recognise several people in particular. 

Firstly, it’s quite appropriate as we’ll shortly be at a golf club to make a ‘longest drive’ award which goes to James and Julia who’ve come up from Bristol and also to thank Team Dorrington, all from my wife, Hilary’s, side of the family as we Dodridges are pretty thin on the ground, to Hilary for supporting me, to Ben for cancelling some pretty important work stuff and for bringing his lovely wife Kate and daughter Ella, who’ll you be able to meet later, and to Emma whose recent hospitalisation means she’s watching us online.

Also, I’d like to recognise some really special Friends of Dad: Peter and Marie (pronounced with a long aaa) who absolutely win the ‘Visitors of the Year’ award and Marie (normal pronunciation) who not only organised so many of you to come but also, when Dad had his final fall at home, was first on the scene to help him even though she didn’t know she was top of his emergency call list!

Dad was of course slightly miffed as he realised around February this year that he wasn’t going to make his century but actually, he didn’t want to a red letter from the King; he wanted to make 99 not out as one of his favourite jokes was the story about the centipede with the wooden leg.  How does it go you ask?  97, 98, 99 clonk is the answer.

So, Dad was born in 1925, the time of the Flapper and "The Great Gatsby" though I’m not so sure that the Twenties were exactly ‘Roaring’ in Sheerness-on-Sea where Dad was born, a Man of Kent.  In his early years, being in a port town, Dad wanted to join the Royal Navy but his dentist, an ex-matelot, talked him out of it by explaining what life was really like for ordinary seamen as distinct from officers.

His Father, my Grandad, having been injured in the First World war, worked as an administrator in the dockyard but by the time Dad was of secondary school age his Father was working in London in the War Office causing the family to move to the Shirley Hills, near Croydon. It was here that he fell in love with aircraft, cycling over to Croydon Aerodrome regularly to see what were in those days, the gigantic Imperial Airways planes and the latest bi-plane fighters.  Family holidays before the War were often aboard a pair of Punts on the Thames together with his brother and the their Collie dog.  Dad always loved reading ‘Three Men in a Boat’ as their escapades triggered happy memories for him.

The second World War truncated this idyllic life and the family were evacuated to Harrogate.  This is fortunate for me, Emma and Ben as this is where he met Celia, my Mother.  As he finished school, he was still too young to be conscripted but he did join the Home Guard.  In later years, he very much identified himself as Private Pike; he had to guard a very solid bridge which he was told to destroy on the approach of enemy tanks using the Platoon’s one and only small First World War hand grenade.
Soon enough of course, Dad was called up and sent off for basic Army training and then advanced training as an infantryman.  He told me often that his training left him completely and utterly unprepared for the reality of war. 

After the War, Dad’s family returned south to London and he continued to court Celia who, fortuitously, had also relocated to London, all still working for the War Office.  Dad had finally decided on his future career path and enrolled at the Brixton School of Building to study architecture…a seven-year slog but one that really developed his budding artistic skills.
Dad and Celia married in November 1950.  That was the only time my Yorkshire born and bred Grandmother ever ventured south of Leeds.  She was rather troubled as the ceremony took place in a Registry Office rather than a Chapel. But apparently, she felt more able to talk to the neighbours about it as the venue was Caxton Hall where many film stars of the day got hitched.
I was born a few years later in ’53 shortly before Dad qualified as an Architect and that decided them to move out of London as the smogs were awful.  Dad spent the next 10 years working for local councils as they were willing to offer housing to staff. 
This took us first to Billericay, where I have my very first memory of Dad unveiling my Christmas present…a wonderful bright red pedal car with a silver 2 painted on it. 

I also remember him telling me stories at bedtime, often about a little tank engine that would be driven by fairies.  Many years later, when Emma and Ben were on the scene, they too revelled in Grandad’s stories and thundered up and down the landing as either the engine or a naughty truck squealing with laughter.  Not much sleep was induced but huge fun was had.
We next moved on to Cobham.  Here, Dad bought his first car, well a sort of car…it was a Jowett Bradford which rather like a small bread van with windows but it was a great hit with all of us schoolkids long before anyone had coined the term, school-run.
Family holidays in the early days were usually visits to one or other of the grandparents either in Yorkshire or, by then, Devon.  I well remember happy days with Dad, climbing crags in the Dales or tors on Dartmoor.  A little later our family holidays were often under canvas.  Once, to make a change from campsites near to Grandparents, we branched out to sunny Kent and even sailed across the Channel on a converted paddle steamer.

 
After Cobham, we moved on to Horsham. After a couple of years, Mum and Dad bought their first and last house in Hawkesbourne Road.  That’s where I was really brought up.  That said, after I left home for Uni, I was immediately replaced by a pair of German Pointers, Duffy and Brack; I think they were less troublesome!
Initially, Dad worked locally for Horsham Urban District Council, then he had a spell commuting to Croydon to work for the Gas Board and finally, more locally again with mid-Sussex District Council from where he retired in 1985. 
That created time to enjoy some great holidaying possibilities, both far afield to Norway and China but most often to his beloved Yorkshire, initially with Mum until she passed away in 2001 and subsequently solo to Yorkshire to walk the hills and dales and paint lots of dilapidated barns and byres.

After Mum died, Dad was introduced to the Outdoor Bowls Club which is where he met so many of you here today.  He loved his later role as a trainer and providing transport to matches, both home and away, and most especially the companionship of so many new friends.  Mind you, some of you may have noticed that Dad had a tendency to be stubborn at times.  You’d be absolutely right to think so as Mum’s pet name for him was ‘Mule’!

Now having a little more time on his hands, Dad really threw himself into his watercolour painting, sometimes producing a new painting every two or three days.  He was, of course, his own sharpest critic so he’d often paint on the back of junk mail letters rather than despoil a decent sheet of watercolour paper.

Dad was always game for a new adventure though.  One Christmas, Hilary popped a reporter’s notebook in his stocking.  “What shall I do with this?”, he asked.  “Write a book!” said Hilary and so he did - Memoirs of a Conscript - which I know that some of you have read.  It’s a tale of Dad from his teenage years through his evacuation, meeting Mum and his sometimes tragic, sometimes funny war experiences including getting shot (which proved to be very fortunate for both him and me but that’s another story) and being invalided back to Blighty for a while before returning to the front line. 

It was during a discussion about all these experiences, which he hadn’t spoken about before in any detail, that he said wistfully of the various places he’d passed through that he supposed he’d never see them again.  Asked if he would like to, he immediately said, “Yes!” and so we did a road trip right across France, Belgium and Germany into Denmark where he was on VE Day. 
One day, while we were hunting along the edge of some woods in Germany for a series of slit trenches that he’d dug and spent many uncomfortable nights in, a friendly German chap came up, thinking we were lost, and asked if he could help.  A vision of John Cleese immediately appeared in our minds as we said to ourselves, “Don’t mention the war”.  Fortunately, Hilary, as our best German-speaker, broke the slightly awkward silence and asked for the directions to the High Street and so we headed off in the direction of the High Street with many a thank you to our friendly German guide. 

Dad really enjoyed that German road trip but when asked the following year if he’d like to visit Berlin, which was where he spent his post-war Army service, he said, “No, I’d rather go Florence!” so that’s what we did and then another trip to Rome. 
Reminiscing about his visits to Croydon Aerodrome as a lad ended up with him enjoying a flight in a Tiger Moth on his 90th birthday.  The plane was virtually the same age as Dad.  The pilot took him over the old Aerodrome area and then circled over his old house in Shirley. 

Only 18 months ago, he surprised us all by swinging on the rope swing that I’d put up for great granddaughter, Ella, in our garden. 

For his most recent birthday, last October, he announced that he didn’t want any presents but that he did want to walk across the Millennium Footbridge, then see Southwark Bridge where he did his first outdoor sketch as an architectural student and have lunch afterwards at The George, an old Tudor coaching inn on Borough High Street where he had his first pint of cider.  With a bit of planning, involving the whole family, we and he did just that and he loved it.

So that’s a brief sketch of John Dodridge: son, husband, Dad, Grandad, very proud Great Grandad and firm friend.  I can only hope that I and everyone else here today can enjoy life as he did and make so many friends along the way.  Thank you, most sincerely, for taking the time and trouble to come today.  Do please join us, if you can, to share your memories and continue Dad’s story afterwards at the Mannings Heath Estate.