The East Coast Area has lost a well-loved member and stalwart one-time Area Secretary in Lorna Hill, and our condolences go out to Robert and to all her family.
It is not for her service as Secretary of the EC Area that Lorna will be best remembered. Not for the admin. and the minutes and the organisation and the diplomacy, although all those things were happily taken for granted by members for nine years (not to mention her years on the committee prior to that). Nor will it be for her dutiful attendance at national committee meetings where her contributions were well-chosen and always worth hearing.
What we will remember, and should celebrate now, is her kindness, generosity and positive energy. Lorna offered a warm welcome to new members and her extraordinary hospitality was legendary. She and Robert opened up their homes for numerous events. At their beautiful Suffolk Barn home they hosted multiple committee meetings and several memorable Burns Suppers with the full Scottish feast and rigmarole, whilst the spectacular location of their Scottish base near Oban in the west of Scotland wowed all of the participants of the OGA50 Round Britain Cruise in 2013. Now that was truly a party to remember! And we must not forget Lorna’s forbearance when visiting gaffers she had put up in her home on that occasion contrived to liberate windows from their frames or bring artwork crashing to the floor (mentioning no names). These would be occasions when Lorna’s characteristic “knowing look” with ever so slightly raised eyebrows was brought to bear. Those who were subjected to this look will not have missed its significance and perhaps one of the last recipients would be the well-meaning staff member at the hospice in Ipswich recently, who cheerfully suggested to Lorna, by that time bed bound and capable of very little movement at all, that she might like to take her mind off things with some light watercolour sketching. Lorna’s response needed no words.
Wit, imagination and her sense of fun, even mischief – all that, we, like Lorna’s family, are going to really miss. There was a time during her term as Secretary when if any EC Area event had an original, or silly, or downright quirky element, you could bet that Lorna was somewhere involved, either in the idea, the planning, the execution or as an enthusiastic participant, latterly with her granddaughter Lilly. Lorna’s humour extended to meetings and year-end reports – it is Lorna and Robert we have to thank for the introduction of the famous Horse’s Head, first presented to the then Godfather of the Crouch Mafia at a Burnham Dinner.
Robert and Lorna of course sailed their gaff yawl ‘Charm’ together, taking part in events and cruises, but also fiercely competitive in races, although Lorna did once admit that she hadn’t really taken much to sailing until her first gaffers race with ‘Charm’, when it dawned on her in full the vital importance of not being overtaken.
Pranks that Lorna participated in whilst on an EC Gaffers visit to Enkhuizen in the Netherlands will be well remembered by some, but are perhaps best not repeated here. There will be plenty more memories and anecdotes about Lorna out there to be shared, but one member perhaps summed it up for many of us when he said, on learning the sad fact of Lorna’s passing, that it was amazing how many of his memories of the past 20 years Lorna featured in, and that she was truly a one-off.
Witty as ever, Lorna herself may have inadvertently given us the best epitaph in the words she arranged to be printed on ‘his and hers’ t-shirts for herself and Robert for gaffers’ events: Lorna’s t-shirt read simply and appropriately “Lady with Charm”.
Sue Lewis
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