The World is our
Tortoise.
A HISTORY OF MY FATHER LEONARD CROOKES
1911 – 1986
By Eric Crookes
My Dad was born on
January 11th 1911 at Stannington View
Road, Crookes, Sheffield. I want to recognise the one hundredth
anniversary of his birth on this web-page.
I don’t know why I want to do that I just want to do it. I have a feeling that all lives are worthy of
recognition no matter how meagre they may seem to be. Most people have many facets to their lives;
we are all immediately a son or a daughter to our parents, most of us are a
brother or a sister to our siblings if we have any and later we are a husband
or wife or a mother or father; and they are just in our family lives.
My Dad’s
life was, in his early days, difficult because of the classic working class
Sheffield life he lived in a large family in a small house. As we all know the 1920 years were ones of
austerity brought about through shortages of work, poor education facilities
and the poverty of ambition and culture.
As a family they appear to have been close knit, my dad spoke with
affection about his brothers and sisters.
They were friends as well as siblings.
You can see by their dress sense that they had a shared appreciation of
the styles of the day, smart suits, jackets and hats: the sisters and wives
were naturally attractive and were able to wear fine clothes at the right time.
Work was
scarce though and at twenty years old my dad joined the Royal Navy. He made a career of it and served through the
Second War and into the Korean Emergency in 1952
My Grandmother, Aunty Elsie and Aunty Edna as a
baby
Uncle Harry and Aunty Marion on their wedding day
Uncle Frank
Uncle Albert (standing) and Lew Morton family friend
Uncle Albert
My Dad on a motor bike with a young woman
My Dad with Uncle Arnold
POSM Leonard
Crookes
My Mother and Dad on his demob in 1953
Back to my home page www.wendrick.co.uk/index.htm
e-mail at ecrookes@wendrick.co.uk