JOSEPHINE ELLIS(nee Folwell) EULOGY, by Margaret Clayton, 17 Sept 2008

JOSEPHINE MARY ELLIS (nee Folwell)

B26/04/1930 - D09/09/2008

EULOGY

BY HER SISTER, MARGARET CLAYTON

My sister – Jo

 Jo in her garden in Lambley, Nottingham.

   Jo and Margaret Folwell

It has suddenly struck me that I am now the senior member of my extended family – my buffer zone has gone. This has given me pause for thought, and as the only person here who knew Jo as a child and teenager I thought you might like to have just a tiny glimpse of her early years.

Jo was the first born child to Joseph and Mary Folwell. I was the second and my brother Anthony, the youngest died in 1979.

As a child Jo was a real tomboy with enthusiasm for all pursuits outdoors but was also a merciless prankster and I was often the butt of her practical jokes. She and Anthony often made a twosome and I was left, piggy in the middle. But this state of affairs lessened by the time we went to school.

It was she who decided we go sledging, out for a bike ride, swimming or exploring, and by now Anthony was off with other male friends which left Jo and me.

Her love of reading started in the early years, and not being allowed comics at home, she would use her Saturday penny for the bus fare into town to Leicester’s central library to catch up on the affairs of her boarding school “friends” in the comics of the time. Some times she took me along, but my reading skills were not up to this kind of sophisticated occupation and I                remember getting rather bored.
Picture: Jo Ellis and Margaret Clayton

At the Newark Girls Grammar School I recall she was good at hockey and also enjoyed tennis. She was also always delighted when it was potato picking time (this was during the war of course) which meant she could escape from formal lessons. She was learning to play the violin at the time, but being left handed found it very difficult and gave up trying after about a year or so.

I think she was 15 when she and one of her school pals hired a tandem and set off on a Youth Hostelling holiday in the Lake District, which was a big adventure at that time. Academia did not beckon until much later, tho’ by the time she was 14 she had discovered the arts and music in particular and when she heard that Beniamino Gigly (the Pavarotti of the day) was to give a concert in Leicester she decided that we would go. The local paper recalled afterwards that the queue for tickets stretched almost a mile and I know she went off in the morning and was gone most of the day coming back triumphant with 2 of the cheapest tickets available.

Sometime after this concert she bought a record to play on our newly acquired wind up gramophone. This was the final trio from Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and I recall Mother, she and me standing listening to this luscious piece for the first time and I can see the look of pure joy on her face even now.

She left school at 16 and decided she would be interested in a career in horticulture and was employed by a rose growing nursery in Leicester at the time when much of the labour force was made up of German prisoners of war. She soon became adept at rose pruning, grafting and budding and by all accounts was the best muck spreader there.

Her one flirtation with smoking took place here and her chosen tobacco was St Julian – in a pipe! She lodged whilst employed at Coles’ at the home of the manager and his wife – and I can remember her coming home on Saturday afternoons on her bike – we lived some 10 miles away – and in the summer the handlebars would be festooned with huge bunches of roses.

Her outdoor life with plenty of exercise gave her glowing good health and vitality and she brought these attributes to her marriage and the rearing of 5 very boisterous children. Her occasional escape from total immersion in child oriented occupations was a growing interest in history in its many branches and she read widely, embracing peripheral aspects including architecture, fine paintings, needlework and foreign travel. She was well read in all these subjects.

The final avenues of history she explored were local and family history and her researches here lead to the locating of relatives we had lost sight of and also some we had never known about. She kept up correspondence with these people and remained on friendly terms with many of them.

Fast forward now to 2006 when Jo’s health was giving us all cause for concern but being Jo this did not deter her from motoring to Manchester to spend a few days with her youngest son Andrew and whilst there they went to the opera. What did they see, Der Rosenkavalier! At this point it seems appropriate that we listen again to that sublime aria which had first entranced her, whilst reflecting on the life of one whose grit, stoicism in the face of her growing frailty, and love of life leaves me breathless with admiration.

I shall miss her so much.

Margaret Clayton
September 2008