Friday 5th November 2010
With permission of the family, below are the tributes given at Jenny's funeral on 29th October 2010.Jennifer Anne Pile
Jennifer Anne Baldwin was born at home in Penarth on February 7th 1948. With a father who was not long back from the Far East and a mother who spent the entire war in uniform it is not surprising that they wanted to get on with completing their family and I came along not too long afterwards but Jen was my big sister, she was always my big sister - and she never let me forget it.
Though when she was very little our dad Wilf sometimes called her “Jenny Wren” to our family my sister was usually Jen and not Jenny as she was in the village. From the very beginning I remember Jen as someone completely confident, capable and certain and to us the name Jenny with its more tentative implications just did not suit her. Jen was never tentative.
We were close as children and shared the usual childhood illnesses – including one particularly unsavoury episode when we were tucked up in the same bed and one of us was sick all over the other, fortunately we never could remember which was the culprit and which the victim and diplomatically our mother chose not to remember either even before her memory completely went.
Jen was a tall, confident child and an almost ideal big sister. She looked after me, introduced me to school when I went a year after her and showed appropriate concern and care for my well-being. I did not always appreciate this particularly as I alone knew she was capable of inflicting the most vicious and painful Chinese burns if I did anything to displease her. However it is clear that Jen's bottomless capacity to show care for others was learned early and exercised regularly from an early age.
At age 11 Jen was the first in our family to go to the local Grammar School where she spent 5 happy and successful years. In the last few of these she showed a very strong interest in becoming a nurse. She seemed ideally suited for that and it was a bit of a surprise when, after “O” levels she opted instead for work as a library assistant in the main library in Penarth. Even now I am not clear whether Jen did this because for once in her life she lost confidence or because her little brother had already shown an enthusiasm for staying on at school and the family budget would not allow for two children to be supported through extra years of schooling.
Whatever the reason Jen's work in the library did set the pattern for the remainder of her life as in that job she met a dashing architectural assistant who worked for Penarth Council. He was older than her, had his own car and a group of loyal, sophisticated friends. It was no contest and in 1966 Jen married David Pile in Albert Road Methodist Church around the corner from her childhood home.
Jen continued to work and at first they lived in a rented flat in Penarth. After a time they moved to their first house, around the corner from where our parents then lived. This proved very convenient in 1967 when Anthony arrived and our mother became a ready and frequent babysitter and enabled Jen to go on working.
Jen could never be faulted on her work ethic. As the family grew with the arrival of Nick and then Liz and money got to be tighter Jen could and would turn her hand to almost anything to help out the family budget. This juggling of work and family became more complicated in the early 70's when the Piles moved to Talbot Green near Llantrisant and lost the free babysitting service.
By now Jen was deeply embedded in the local community as well as often doing a number of part-time jobs. Jen was the epitome of the old saying, “If you want something done then ask a busy person”.
Jen discovered that she had lots of talents including selling saucepans, doing the books for the burgeoning Pile architecture empire and keeping three children and a husband fed and clothed. It was just as well. Dave Pile worked long hours and had many talents but effective household management wasn't one of them and it was often left to Jen to keep the show on the road. Not surprisingly it did occasionally veer into the ditch. There was the evening when Jen was at work with Liz and somehow Tony broke his arm falling off the top bunk when only he and Nick were in the house. The question “did he fall or was he pushed?” was never adequately answered and after a while Jen wisely stopped asking. Jen was again at work and the twosome in the house when somehow the kitchen caught fire. It was not too serious but again innocence or otherwise was difficult to establish.
However what might reduce some people to screaming hysterics Jen just floated through serenely whilst still keeping the household going and radiating her usual even temper.
However by 1979 the sometimes fevered atmosphere in the Pile household encouraged Jen and Dave to think that a calmer lifestyle in a less pressured rural location might provide a better option for the family and the rest of the story belongs to Grosmont.
PB October 29 2010
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The Pile family arrived in Grosmont on a snowy February day in 1979. Our parents had visited the village the previous summer and decided this was the place to bring up their family - plus the house price matched their rather limited budget. It says something of how important family was to our Mother that she was willing to leave her job and friends to move to somewhere where her children could get the best start in life.
So began 31 years in Grosmont, during which our Mum was to become as involved in the community as it was possible to be.
Despite being an architect, our Dad somehow failed to notice (or chose not to mention) the huge amount of work that would be required on the house. Through the 15-year renovation process my mother kept us well fed and happy despite the frequent lack of key domestic facilities, such as a kitchen, heating, windows or, for several months, a staircase. Mum saw this chapter in family life, in the same way as Dad did, as a character building experience for all involved.
As a post-war baby Mum made sure that food was never wasted and that we always cleared our plates. She had the incredible skill of being able to rustle up a square meal from whatever was around although mealtimes were often a strange concoction of things from the “bottom of the freezer” or “some leftovers”. These meals made up of leftovers were so common that it made us wonder who was actually eating the meals that they were leftovers from. Ever practical, whenever Mum stayed with her family she always brought the contents of the fridge, lest it was wasted, and would encourage us to make use of the half a beetroot or whatever item that came with her
In the kitchen, cake baking was her forte and welsh cakes her speciality. The house was rarely without a box of welsh cakes and the bake stone was a treasured item. No village event was without the round curranty cakes and Mum even went into professional production during her time at the Gentle Jane teashop.
Although three kids kept her busy, Mum also had a number of jobs in the village to help make ends meet, working first in Nash’s shop and then as the receptionist in the Doctor’s surgery. She liked to meet new people through these jobs and her various village events and quickly developed a very wide circle of friends. At the Gentle Jane teashop she greatly enjoyed talking to village visitors, giving them a potted history of the castle or church. It was in the teashop that she met Damien Lewis while he was scouting locations for “The Baker”. She had long admired his acting talent – and it must be said, his dashing good looks, and it was through getting to know the film crew that she got the job of location nurse when filming started in the village.
When we kids had flown the nest Mum decided it was time for her own career, finally following her initial instincts and taking up nursing. It shows great courage that she was prepared to take this step, involving as it did a return to learning as well as training alongside people less than half her age. She qualified well and chose to work in one of the most demanding environments; the Special Care Baby Unit. She worked across the county and made many good friends in the Baby Care units at Newport and Neville Hall.
Nursing proved to be a large part of Mum’s life even outside work. She was the principal carer for her Mother for many years, a commitment that she gave willingly despite the additional workload and restrictions it put on her own lifestyle.
Her nursing skills and total love for the family came together in 1999 when she nursed our Dad throughout his battle with cancer. Mum provided round the clock care for many weeks and through it all remained as strong and resilient as ever. It was due to her love and dedication that our Dad was able to pass away in the home that he loved with our mother, his wife of 32 years, lying next to him.
51 is a very young age to be widowed and we know that Mum never stopped grieving for her David. It gives us a lot of comfort to know that they are together at last. Somewhere up there they are having a cuddle, or catching up on the last 11 years, or sitting in the sunshine, or just about to set off on some ill-prepared adventure in the Morris 1000 – which will invariably involve misplaced keys, emergency roadside repairs, arguments over map-reading, and a lot of laughing.
After Dad’s passing she threw herself back into nursing and the village activities. Mum did not enjoy living alone, and keeping herself busy helped her to cope.
Many people in the village looked to her for help and support and she willingly gave it. As well as looking after her Mother she would also help other pensioners in Poorscript lane, often using her nursing skills to good effect and possibly saving a life or two. She was very generous with her time, helping to raise money for a variety of village causes through cake baking, manning stalls or whatever was required.
We’ve tried to make a list of all the activities Mum got involved in - Bell ringing, WI, Gadmag, Church Warden, Member of the choir, Parish Council, Gardening club, shares club, the Pig Cooperative, Angel investors. Mum very much enjoyed the community spirit and companionship that came with these groups. She also loved to sing and took part in a number of successful amateur choral productions. So often was she out at some social event, committee or group that it could take us more than a week to track her down on the phone. We even took to telephoning friends in the village to see if she had been spotted.
Hobbies came and went. Some were quite short-lived, such as the lace making and the knitting machine – others were more longstanding such as her interest in genealogy. Mum was always hoping to uncover some noble blood or hidden fortune in the family, but unfortunately that wasn’t to be. She did however proudly announce last year that she had discovered that one of our not so distant relatives had turned out to be a bigamist.
She followed our Dad into the Pontypool Rotary Club and it was only due to ill health that she wasn’t able to take up the role of Club President – she would have been the first woman to have held that position in the club. She kept attending Rotary meetings even when walking became difficult – she was more than willing to endure the discomfort to spend the time with the people she cared about.
Neither her terminal diagnosis last summer, not the subsequent treatments slowed her down. Only weeks after major brain surgery she walked the legs off her sister-in-law Viv whilst visiting a historic building. That day they also visited an exhibition of old surgical instruments and, when spying a trepanning tool Mum was happy to tell the other visitors that she had just had that operation. A little macabre maybe – but Mum did have quite a dark sense of humour at times.
She was a very practical and pragmatic person, and not one given to sentimentality. She gave all her family unconditional love and support, but was not the sort of mother who would smother us. She did all she could to give us make every opportunity in life – in many cases opportunities that had not been open to her. She was a strong woman, clear in her views and committed to whatever course she choose. She showed her innate courage in the way she dealt with her illness, her spirits didn’t drop and her love of life was never diminished.
The party she organised in July was her way of thanking all those who had helped and supported her during her illness. It was also a goodbye to so many village friends, as she knew her period of relatively good health would soon be coming to an end. Even then, she followed that up with a solid performance at the village produce show in
August. It was these village events and the support from so many friends that really kept her going over the last 16 months
We will fondly remember a week away in Mid Wales a couple of years ago where the entire family shared a large cottage. Mum didn’t take the role of matriarch – it wasn’t really her style – instead she took the time to relax and enjoy the company of the family with the 7 grandchildren running around her feet. Towards the end of the week (when the rain finally stopped) we all took to the nearby woods to play hide and seek – with Mum securing victory by hiding herself deep in the carpet of bluebells. Seeing Mum jump up from her hiding place and surprise the grandchildren will be a lasting memory. She got very wet and it was no doubt uncomfortable but she enjoyed the raw fun of it
She lived a full and generous life and without the illness would have given many more years of love and support to both her biological family and her adopted family here in Grosmont. She will be deeply missed, but we know that she is now with her beloved David, and they are just starting a new adventure together - driving around somewhere with a flask of tea and a box of welsh cakes.
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