OUR AGM & REUNION WEEKEND IN WORCESTER, JULY 2019
Whilst numbers were down due to many of our members sadly not now being able to travel, we still had a fabulous weekend at the new venue just outside Worcester. It was a great shame to not see our Stratford upon Avon friends, but we have made new friends in this lovely area.
We were very happy to have FEPOW Vic Pugh and his friend Jonathan with us, as well as Civilian Internees Jean Addis and Paul Werlemann, and our widows Sheila Brede, Elsie Edwards, Gill Hopkinson, Ann Kelly and Pam Stubbs. There were 28 of us in all, certainly enough to make it a wonderfully intimate and friendly gathering of your Java Club Family.
The Bank House Hotel staff were very accommodating, we had spacious rooms, good food and fabulous facilities. Many of us took advantage of the swimming pool, sauna, steam room and lovely massages. They made a very special effort, decorating the tables and chairs for our ' gala dinner' with red, white and blue!
On the Saturday morning we held our AGM.
We held our 'gala dinner' on the Saturday night and were overjoyed that the fabulous singer, Victoria, from our previous reunions came all the way from Stratford upon Avon to entertain us! We held our raffle (thanks to Ann Kelly, Sue Turner & Peter Parmee for their assistance) with some lovely prizes as well as plenty for Lesley to take the mickey out of and as usual we ended the night with rousing choruses of Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory
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On the Sunday, we were warmly welcomed to the beautiful local church, St Edburga's in Leigh, where a wonderfully meaningful service was conducted for us by Jennifer Whittaker. We had an organist who played Elgar, being in Elgar country, and a cornet player for the last post and reveille and Vic Pugh and Lesley laid the wreath on behalf of the Java Club together
The local ladies then supplied us with fabulous sandwiches, cakes and tea inside their lovely church. It was lovely that they made us all so very welcome and took such an interest in our group!
As you can see above we still have use of Bill Welch's FEPOW standard which comes with us on all reunions, as well as gracing the coffins of our 'boys' on their last journey (thanks to the Welch family).
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At reunions we also always have the priceless carving made by Reg Beck in Boie Glodok Gaol, Batavia in 1942 (thanks to Marian Rutherford, Reg's daughter). You will recognise this as being adopted by the Java FEPOW Club founders as our Club's logo and is very precious to us, as was dear Reg.