14 Dec 2004
Wife: Sylvia Joan RUSS also known as: Joan RUSS died at age: 84
Born: 10 Jul 1917 in 10 College Road Harrow
Died: 7 Apr 2002
Resided: 1918-1923 with Aunt Bertha Welch 1
Resided: 1923 - summer 1924 at Melbury Lodge, Kempsey 2
Resided: 1924 - 1926 at 146 Kenilworth Court, Lower Richmond Road, Putney 3
Resided: 1926- 1929 at 10 Priory Crescent, Lewes 4
Resided: 1929 at 54 Sutherland Avenue, Maida Vale 5
Resided: 1932 at 144 Albany Street 6
Resided: 1934 - 1942 in Crowborough Sussex 7
Resided: 2001 in Birmingham
Religion: Roman Catholic
Education: 1935 Tunbridge Wells High School 8
Occupation: 1936 -1942 Student teacher then secretary for insurance office in Tunbridge Wells 9,10
Military: 1942 Women's Auxiliary Air Force 11
Father: Charles RUSS
Mother: Jessie Naylor GODDARD
Husband: Harold L RUSSELL died at age: 74
Married: 17 Jun 1944 her age: 26 his age: 31 12,13,14,15
Born: 1913
Died: May 1987
Military: 193? Entered RAF and trained as Aircraft engineer 16,17
Occupation: 1946? - 1973? Joseph Lucas Aerospace Divn
Father:
Mother:
F Child 1: Frances RUSSELL age: 59
Born: 1945
Spouse: Bartholomew LOOBY
F Child 2: Sylvia RUSSELL age: 58
Born: 1946 Twin of Harold
Spouse: Dennis BAXTER
M Child 3: Harold Michael RUSSELL nickname: Mike age: 58
Born: 1946 Twin of Sylvia
Spouse: Susan HUGHES
M Child 4: Robert RUSSELL age: 55
Born: 1949
Spouse: Angela SUTTON
F Child 5: Gwen RUSSELL married name: Gwen RUSSELL-JONES age: 51
Born: 1953
Spouse: Keith JONES married name: RUSSELL-JONES
F Child 6: Mary RUSSELL age: 48
Born: 1956
Spouse: Philip MORTON
M Child 7: James RUSSELL nickname: Jim age: 47
Born: 1957
Spouse: Lisa RATNIK
F Child 8: Elizabeth RUSSELL age: 42
Born: 1962
Spouse: John KELLY
Spouse: Unknown BOOTHE
Sources:
(1) from Margaret Welch] Joan Russ was with her Auntie Bertha and Uncle Frank
Welch from the age of 9 months until 6 years old. Then Joan's father recalled
her to be with him and his second wife Zoe, who already had charge of Patrick.
This was very much to the dismay of Bertha and Frank, who had hoped they might
have been allowed to adopt Joan. Their daughters, Margaret and Christine had
treated Joan as a well-loved younger sister.
(2) NT, Before long, Patrick was joined at Melbury Lodge by Joan, whom he had
only known as a little girl with whom he played during rare visits to Aunt
Bertha and Uncle Frank at Pinner. Now aged five, she arrived at the family home
which her father's remarriage enabled him to provide. Sadly, the move was to
have a disastrous effect upon her for the remainder of her life. Her Aunt
Bertha and Uncle Frank had become very fond of her, and even proposed to adopt
her as their daughter. Her father declined the offer, a refusal which in later
years Joan came to resent. 49.
(3) NT, 58.
(4) NT, 72.
(5) NT, 106.
(6) Nikolai Tolstoy, Patrick O'Brian - the Making of the Novelist (Century
2004), NT, 117.
(7) NT, 135.
(8) NT, 138.
(9) NT, her love of literature led her to nurture the ambition of becoming a
librarian. However this was not to be, and after leaving school she worked
first as a student teacher, and then as secretary for an insurance office in
Tunbridge Wells. 138.
(10) NT, After leaving school in 1936 she worked for three or four years as a
student teacher, then in an insurance office in Tunbridge Wells, to which she
cycled daily on the handsome Sunbeam bicycle given her on her twenty-first
birthday by Victor and Bun. 287.
(11) NT, In 1942 Joan managed to escape from her stifling little cage when she
joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, and was posted to Birmingham. 287.
(12) DK, 'In the summer of 1944, Joan Russ married an RAF mechanic'.
(13) Ind, Mary Morton - Oct 2001: My mother and father met in the RAF during the
war. My mother used to say that it was the similarity in their surnames which
brought them together; service members had tin mugs with their names on and my
father had challenged
her, thinking that she had taken his mug!
My mother is now 84 and living in a nursing home in Birmingham.
(14) Apr-Jun 1944: Birmingham 6 d 1282.
(15) NT, In due course they married on 17 June 1944. Harold Russell was a devout
Roman Catholic, and before their marriage Joan converted to his faith. 287.
(16) Ind, Mary Morton - Oct 2001: My mother and father met in the RAF during the
war. My mother used to say that it was the similarity in their surnames which
brought them together; service members had tin mugs with their names on and my
father had challenged her, thinking that she had taken his mug! My father,
Harold Leonard Russell,
had joined up before the war during the Depression and trained as an aircraft
engineer. We’ve only recently discovered, from his younger brother Alf aged
80, that part of my father’s job which he was not allowed to talk about was
fitting radar into Spitfires and Hurricanes. After the war he joined the
aerospace division of Joseph Lucas where he stayed till his retirement. My
parents had six children of their own (I’m number six) and then adopted my
brother Jim and sister Liz (both of whom were at the cousin party) from
Father Hudson’s Homes in Coleshill just outside Birmingham. My father died in
May 1987 aged 74. My mother is now 84 and living in a nursing home in
Birmingham.
(17) NT, Fortunately, not long after her [Joan] arrival in Birmingham she became
friends with a young man called Harold Russell, a precision engineer working in
British Aerospace on the Rolls-Royce RB211 engine. Rubbish! BAe did not exist
in 1944 - and the RB211 is a turbofan engine developed in the 1960s for the
Lockheed Tristar and the Boeing 747, 287.
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