KENT NEWS: A family tree researcher who discovered mistakes on the war graves of a tragic young couple has made breakthroughs in his quest for information.
Gravesend pensioner John Franklin, 71, made it his mission to correct the errors at Holy Cross Church in Bearsted, near Maidstone, and has spent six years contacting relatives and gathering information about two of the people remembered there.
George and Pamela Lawrence (née Thorpe) had been married for just five months when Pamela, who was a senior cipher clerk in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, died in an air accident in January, 1943.
Her husband died in similar circumstances just over a year later.
Mr Franklin appealed for help in tracing relatives of the couple after discovering Mr Lawrence’s age was a year out on his tombstone, while the date of his wife’s death was also incorrect.
The errors can only be rectified if a relative gives consent.
Mr Franklin said: “An article in your newspaper led me to a close relative of Pamela’s. She had very little knowledge about her but was delighted to have made contact.
“She and I, along with an elderly Bearsted resident who at one time was actually led by Pamela in the Brownies, filled in a lot of the gaps.
“But with George I was running into blanks everywhere, to the extent that I could do very little research on him for about two years.”
After taking advice from staff at the Kent Studies Centre in Maidstone, Mr Franklin contacted a local newspaper in Woking, Surrey, for help in finding Mr Lawrence’s nephew, Mark, who he knew had lived in the town at one point.
The appeal worked and led to Mr Franklin also getting the chance to meet Mr Lawrence’s brother and sister-in-law.
He said: “I spoke to them at length. They had very little knowledge of what had happened to George during the war, but I had this young man’s life history in my hands and was able to copy it all for them. They had a seven-and-a-half minute clip of George and Pamela’s wedding on 35mm film that they burned onto a DVD for me, which was brilliant.”
Mr Franklin said he would not pressure the relatives he had met into correcting the mistakes, which he puts down to a combination of poor arithmetic and scruffy handwriting on the headstone instructions.
He said: “I just got the bug with this thing. There will come a day when I reach as far as I can go, but I just thought it was something that should be recognised.
“If the relatives are happy to let it lie, then that’s fine. I have plenty of other things to be getting on with.”
POSTED: 07/02/2010 12:00:00
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