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. 

Name Index