Mr Gent’s Century of Memories

Although I concentrate on celebrity anecdotes in my after-dinner talks, ‘ordinary’ people often have extraordinary stories to tell. My neighbour Frank Gent has scores of them, but then he has been around a long time – 100 years, to be precise.

 

It’s always nice when you’re able to bring a local story to national prominence and I interviewed Frank for local magazine It’s All About You but realised that the combination of Frank’s phenomenal early memory and that fact that, at 100, he still goes out every day to buy a Daily Express, might interest a certain national newspaper.

 

The result was that the story below became a double-page spread in the Express on Frank’s actual 100 th birthday, on Saturday September 11, as all his family gathered from near and far to celebrate the day.

 

Here’ a link to the Express coverage, followed by my initial copy:

 

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/198770/100-yeas-old-The-incredible-memory-man

 

Oh, and the missing letter in the on-line headline is down to the Express, not yours truly!

 

Memory Man Reaches 100

 

If centenarian Frank Gent were a cat, he’d have used all his nine lives by now. But he celebrates his 100 th birthday today* still marvelling at his own survival and the changing world he has witnessed over the decades.

 

And while anyone who remains hale and hearty enough to live independently in their own home at 100 is pretty remarkable, Mr. Gent combines improbable longevity with a prodigious early memory that even his late mother found freakish.

 

“My mother didn’t believe me at first, but I remember King George V’s Coronation,” says Frank.

 

That’s an amazing claim, since Frank was born in the small Nottinghamshire town of Southwell on September 11, 1910 and was just 10 months old when townsfolk held a party to celebrate the Coronation in June 1911. But his memory is clear:

 

“I was there playing about with a lot of kids, but I couldn’t have anything to eat – they told me I wasn’t old enough. Then a fellow came round with a box of Coronation mugs, and that mug is up in my cupboard still.

 

“Then it rained and they collected all the food and put it through the windows of the Wesleyan schoolroom. Mother said all the details were correct, so she had to believe me!”

 

But the world Frank lives in as he turns 100 is unrecognisable from the one he was born into.

 

“I never expected to see these huge great Jumbo jets get off the ground in my lifetime, let alone see anyone go to the Moon.

 

“The first time I saw an aeroplane I must have been about three years old. There was an air show at Southwell Racecourse. They were queer-looking things. The wheels were like bike wheels, and if you touched the wings they felt light enough to carry about.”

 

Frank lived through Zeppelin raids in the First World War, survived the Depression that followed the 1929 Wall Street Crash, saw front line action in World War Two, married late and raised a family in the Fifties, resisted the appeal of the Beatles and witnessed the space race in the 60s, looked on disapprovingly at the industrial unrest in the 70s, welcomed Mrs. Thatcher’s iron rule in the 80s, despaired of Tony Blair in the 90s and became a widower in the Noughties, defying doctors who gave him six months to live a decade earlier.

 

And for the last 60 years he has read about all the momentous events and cultural shifts in his Daily Express, which he still collects every day from his local Co-op.

 

Frank’s own father, Richard, was a joiner and undertaker but he died of TB in 1915, aged only 32. Mother Nellie then sold the business and moved the family to Balderton, Newark, to live with her parents.

 

Frank’s grandfather was a builder who came out of retirement to keep the family afloat. Bright boy Frank was offered a scholarship to the local grammar school but wasn’t allowed to go – granddad expected him to earn his keep.

 

So Frank left school at 14 and worked for the family firm throughout the 20s and 30s. That meant Frank didn’t suffer the severe hardships which many jobless men went through, but money was terribly tight:

 

“My granddad fed and clothed me and I’d get a little pocket money, not a real wage. I played football for a local club’s second XI but couldn’t play for the first XI because I couldn’t afford the train fare for the away matches every fortnight.”

 

When World War Two started, Frank “got collared by the Government” to build a hospital for the US Air Force. He was awaiting a posting to a new assignment in Iceland when he dreamed he would get his Army call-up papers.

 

Days later, on November 19, 1942, Frank was on leave when the papers arrived:

 

“It was exactly as I’d dreamed it. From that moment I decided I was going to forget that I was myself. I was a number and a name, I was going to do everything they told me and do my best to come back in one piece.”

 

He went on to survive many near misses, firstly when he was almost swept overboard as his troop ship was bombed en route to the Punjab, where Frank was due to drive trucks aiding famine relief.

 

Serving later in North Africa and Italy, Frank fought at Monte Cassino and worked as a driver/radio operator: “They reckoned a driver/operator’s life expectancy was about a fortnight, but I survived.”

 

After the war, Frank had turned 40 when he married Effie, 35, – “the only woman I ever cared about” – in 1951. The couple coped uncomplainingly with post-war austerity. Effie didn’t even want a wedding dress:

 

“There was nothing fancy about the wedding. Effie said ‘I’m too old to dress up in a wedding dress. And anyway, I’m not going to use all my money and ration coupons on a fancy dress that I’m only going to wear once!’”

Daughters Mary and Margaret arrived in 1952 and 1955 respectively, and Frank and Effie concentrated on building a happy family life, characterized by hard graft and idyllic summer holidays in Scarborough.

 

The prospect of seeing British soldiers in action again amid the 1956 Suez Crisis was alarming, but as a middle-aged man who had suffered nervous exhaustion at the end of World War Two, Frank was at least confident he wouldn’t get called up:

 

“I thought ‘The beggars can’t send for me again!’ The only thing that really worried me was my health. I’d get blackouts with my nerves still, and being in the building trade that was dangerous. I nearly fell of a scaffold as I felt myself losing consciousness, but my mate grabbed me just in time and saved me.”

 

Come the 60s, Frank “didn’t like all the long hair, and The Beatles and all the other groups yelling their heads off. But the TV was better back then. I liked the comedy shows with Tommy Cooper and Ken Dodd. The one TV comedian I didn’t like was Bruce Forsyth. He was the only comedian I ever knew who had to ask for applause. I couldn’t stand him!”

 

The industrial unrest that swept across Britain in the 1970s didn’t meet with Mr. Gent’s approval either, but he saw Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979 arrival at No. 10 as a blessing.:

 

“My opinion of strikers was that they were lucky to have a job. When I was younger, you had to work hard if you wanted to keep a job.

 

“But I thought that Mrs. Thatcher was a good ‘un. I even thought the Poll Tax was a good idea, it just wasn’t carried out properly. There were too many exemptions – without those, it would have brought the cost of paying it right down for everyone.”

 

“I had high hopes of Tony Blair too when he took over, but he was a great disappointment, and Brown couldn’t manage the money as Chancellor, or run the country!”

 

Frank’s wife Effie sadly died in 2005, aged 89, after 54 years of happy marriage, and Frank now has four grandchildren and three great grandchildren, including latest arrival Matthew, born on August 27.

 

So can Frank pass on the secret of staying alive against all odds?

 

“There isn’t any secret,” he laughs. “The way to survive is to keep living, keep going, and take no notice... And don’t fall out with anybody if you can help it…”

 

Frank’s big dates in history

 

1910 – Frank Gent born. King George V succeeds to the throne.

 

1915 – Richard Gent, Frank’s father, dies of TB. World War I casualties mount in cataclysmic fashion and the Germans first use chlorine gas as a weapon at the second Battle of Ypres.

 

1924 – Frank leaves school. Ramsay Macdonald becomes Britain’s first Labour Prime Minister.

 

1939 – Frank is still working for the family firm, but the outbreak of World war II makes building materials scarce.

 

1940 – Skilled builders are needed for the war effort, so Frank is recruited to the Government building programme. The Battle of Britain keeps German invasion plans at bay.

 

1942 – Frank is called up to the Army. Britain is blockaded, with German U-Boats and aircraft sinking our shipping to starve us into submission.

 

1945 – Peace is declared, but Frank is almost killed en route to being demobbed when his Dakota troop plane endures a forced landing after running out of fuel.

 

1951 – Frank and Effie marry. The inspirational Festival of Britain marks the first stirrings of a move from post-war austerity to prosperity.

 

1952 – Daughter Mary born. Queen Elizabeth succeeds to the throne. The first jet airliner, the de Havilland Comet, enters service.

 

1955 – Daughter Margaret born. Donald Campbell gains the world water speed record in Bluebird, at an average speed of 212.32mph

 

1960 – Frank changes jobs for the last time to become a building worker with Newark Borough Council. Cliff Richard tops the charts with Please Don’t Tease. The first line-up of The Beatles forms in Liverpool.

 

1975 – Frank retires. The Watergate Scandal leads to prosecutions in America.

 

1984 – Beth, Frank’s first grandchild, is born. Apple introduces the first Macintosh computer. Mrs. Thatcher survives the IRA bombing of Brighton’s Grand Hotel.

 

1996 – Frank given six months to live by hospital doctors. The Government announces that BSE may have been transmitted to people.

 

2010 – Latest great-grandchild Matthew arrives safely on August 27. Devastating floods in Pakistan dominate the headlines.