Remembering Dad - Thomas Mervyn White 25-07-22 to 30-06-74

Today is the 40th Anniversary of my Dad's passing and I cannot believe how time has flown by so quickly. This post is to remember him as with the passage of time there are fewer and fewer people around who knew or indeed actually met him.  This comes to us all in time I know as our physical presence is no more and we are eventually lost to living memory.

My father Thomas Mervyn White was born in Hirwuan in South Wales in 1922.  His father worked as an engineer in the mines and his mother my beloved Nanna was a housewife.  My Dad was always known as Mervyn rather than Thomas or Tom and had a sister Mary who survives him to this day, my smashing Aunty Mary.  I don't know too much about his childhood, but from what my Aunt has told me they seemed to have a happy one and being on the edge of the Brecon Beacons the village of Hirwuan is a mixture of industry, with the mine and the brickworks, with farmland nestling alongside.

My grandfather William White was an extraordinary man who obviously wanted the very best for his son.  I say extraordinary as there would not be many fathers who in the tough conditions of a 1930's South Wales Valley would allow their son to remain at school past leaving age and take a bookkeeping course - he evidently did not want him working in a mine, and this training set Dad on the track to becoming an accountant in later life.  In the meantime the Second World War intervened when he was seventeen, and although it seems bizarre I have reason to be grateful for Adolf Hitler as without the war my Dad would not have met my mother – but more of that later.

Dad started his wartime service in the Home Guard and in later years when ‘Dad’s Army’ became popular I would tease him about being the equivalent of ‘Pike’.  Once he was old enough he joined the Royal Signal Corps and spent some time in London with his Aunty Rene whilst he trained at Technical College.  The rest of his war record is somewhat unknown to me and is a gap in my knowledge I intend to fill.  By early 1946 however he was in Egypt where he met my Mum who was in the WAAF.  They married in December 1946 at Port Said, honeymooned for the princely sum of £4 at Luxor and returned to the UK to one of the worst winters on record in January 1947.

Dad and Mum (left) at El Alamein 1946

They had tough times as a young married couple short of money and living in less that salubrious digs – Mum recalled the damp and the cold many times in later life.  Eventually they had a council house in Cwmbach and from there they transferred to Rowner in Hampshire which sits between Gosport and Fareham.  I came along, a much wanted child, and later we moved to Harrow and eventually to Cambridge, where sadly 40 years ago Dad succumbed to heart disease just shy of his 52nd birthday.

Me and Dad Rowner 1959

My darling Dad was a lovely man, a bit too soft with me perhaps as we both knew I could twist him around my little finger with ease.  But he had loyalty, integrity, great humour and a love for his family.  He was not without fault as I learned much later in life but there are many people for whom his wise counsel, encouragement and common sense proved invaluable throughout their lives.  He gave me a strong feeling of self-worth and an abiding love of Wales, Welsh rugby and Glen Miller.  So here’s to you Dad, I wish we’d had the opportunity for more time together and that you had been around for my wedding day, but I will never forget you and will always love you.