Kenneth Morris (14 Sep 1927 - 5 Mar 2018)

Hi all,

Just to update you that Val gathered together the donations handed in at Ken's funeral, and has sent MacMillan Cancer Support a cheque for £158. She also very kindly donated some of her own money to the Bracken Trust in Llandrindod, Wales.

So in all as of today (31/03/2018), we have jointly raised £1,220.50 for Macmillan Cancer Support!

Thanks again for the donations and

Lots of love,

Tom

In loving memory of a kind, funny and incredibly interesting Uncle.

Here is Bill's (Ken's son) speech from the funeral:

It sometimes takes occasions like this to be reminded of the power of parents as role models…. It becomes all the more sobering when you have children of your own.
As the decades roll on, I realise how much I have learnt and absorbed from Dad.
Indeed when I have done something particularly clumsey or taken an especially perverse stance on some issue of note, Kate will fix me with a searing, beady eye and rasp…”yes Ken!”.
An aspect of life which surely comes directly from Dad is a love of rugby. I was, alas, too young to remember his playing days. But the first thirty years or so of my life was an education in the Game sitting next to dad in his season ticket seats in the old wooden grandstands at the Reddings, watching* England’s Premier Rugby Club*, Moseley. The halcyon days of Course Rugby.
During the last two decades, with mighty Moseley cut to shreds by the professional game, the tables turned and Dad would join me in our seats at the Wasps – now happily ensconced here in the West Midlands.
I see a number of you who joined Dad watching rugby, so you will surely know that, despite being such a gentle man, he had his rugby demons. Any players wearing the shirts of Leicester or the All Blacks were pretty much as low and under hand as it was possible to go. But there was one breed even lower in his esteem – the tawdry referees….short sighted, ignorant or just plain biased – every man, jack of them.
So to flush out the happiest of rugby memories, lets briefly go back thirty years or more to the era and the Art of Course Rugby and the words of Michael Green….
“Rugger is a game for the fit, the enthusiastic, the young men with energy to burn. Course Rugby is played by those who are too old, too young, too light, too heavy, too weak, too lazy, too slow, too cowardly or too unfit for ordinary rugger.
There`s an ambivalent attitude to referees in rugby. Players traditionally abuse, malign and ignore them, but start swapping stories with a rugby man and two-thirds will be about a ref.
Abuse is the common lot of refs. I remember a pompous ref who told two bickering sides “There is only one referee on the field today”, to which the reply from an anguished forward, “Then for Gods sake give him the bloody whistle!”
Of course, I have experienced games where the referee has been one-sided. A village club used to provide their own. He was a dreadful specimen, a great, fat, shaven-headed butcher with a stern determination that his side was going to win, at all costs. For one thing, they were his customers. If an opponent dived over for a perfectly good try he instantly blew his whistle and there would be a long wait while he thought of an infringement. Sometimes he didn`t even bother to think of an infringement, he just vaguely indicated a scrum somewhere near the 25.
He awarded his own team a try if they grounded the ball anywhere within twenty yards of the opposition line.
He even shouted encouragement to his men during the game. You would be waiting to tackle a three-quarter when the referee would appear, running beside him and shouting “Come on, Charlie, you`ve got them now. Never mind the fat bloke in front, you can beat him easily…” It was difficult to decide which to tackle.
This referee also had the habit of mysteriously getting in the way when our side were on the attack. Either a player ran into him or else he was in the way of the pass. Very strange…
But one must not be hard on referees. It is not pleasant to be handed three sets of false teeth during a game, although funnier when you give them back to the wrong people afterwards.
A friend says he saw an aggrieved forward ask the ref to return his teeth. He inserted them, used them to bite an offending opponent in the next scrum, and then returned them to the referee.
Darkness and mud (the two usually seem to go together) form another hazard for officials, and a referee told me he once wrongly awarded a try when what he thought was the white ball was pressed down over the line. Afterwards he found it was the bald head of an elderly prop forward, whom an opponent was pushing into the mud.
To sum up…a correspondent told me the gloriously Pinter-esk dialogue between a referee and a player who had committed a dreadful foul.

REFEREE. What is your name, Smith?
PLAYER: What do you mean what is my name, You know me.

REFEREE: You are a disgrace to the game. Get off the field.
PLAYER: (with an amazed look of disbelief): You can`t send me off. I`m your brother-in-law!”

With thanks to Michael Green…and who knows, perhaps the rugby referees of the world will be having a wicked chuckle today….but I suspect somewhere Dad will be watching England v Ireland this afternoon – and if England lose you can be certain the referee will be in dire need of a visit to the optician, a refresher course in the rules of the sport or a genealogist to forensically check his lineage against that of the Irish players….. but whatever, we`ll all be with you, Dad, as the final whilst blows….

Thank you.

This was taken from the video that Jack (Ken’s youngest grandson) made while over in Australia. This is a write-up of what he said:

Hi everyone, I just thought I would make a small video to be played at DadDad’s [Ken’s] wake and it’s kind of a way of me being there. Obviously it is very hard for me to not be there right now with everything that has happened and it is a hard time for everyone involved. I’d like to be there and this is a small way of me managing that.

So, I’d like to start off by saying a few thankyous. First of all I would like to thank all of his friends: Dennis Brooke, Elizabeth, Anne and Barry – everyone really who’s been there for him. Obviously, over a massive period of time –he lived into his 90s, so if I listed them all I’d be here for ages. But those names, I mean there’s many, stick out over the past few years. Being there to take him out for lunch, or to a garden centre or go over and play some Rummikub. I know those things really meant a lot to him and that in turn meant a lot to me because I knew he was happy when those things were happening. I’d like to thank our family as a whole; it’s been really good to have lots of support during not just the last couple of weeks, but the period before. It was really nice to see everyone at Ken’s 90th – one of those memories that I will look back at very fondly. In particular, my aunts, I know both of you have put in a lot of work with Ken and the last few months have not been easy – these past few years really. It’s meant a lot to me knowing that you guys have been there doing stuff for him and supporting him in many ways. I’d like to thank my dad – I know that you’ve put in a lot of work, dad, and I know and I mean I’ve seen first-hand that you’ve done so much to try to make DadDad as happy and as comfortable as you could – in every way. New TVs, all the Sky Boxes, every sports channels he could ever need! I know he really enjoying spending time with you and it was an example to me watching what you did and I thank you a lot for everything and I know he appreciated it.

I’d like to thank Val and Col, who I think if I didn’t say anything, it would be unjust. What you have done over the past years is exceptional, there aren’t really words for what you’ve been doing – going making trips to him and dealing with whatever situation you find him in. Some days he is sat up watching the cricket; other days barely able to get out of bed, but you have been there rain or shine and it’s truly incredible. It has been so comforting to me knowing you have been there for him all the time to look after him. When I called him up to see how he was doing, you were there and answered. Even just a couple of weeks ago, the last time I spoke to him, knowing that you were there really comforting for me and I want to thank you for all of that over the last few years and obviously longer.

Now it’s probably time to talk about some more cheery things. There’s a lot more to Ken’s life than just the last 2 years that were a mixed bag, but still had some really great moments, like his 90th birthday. I’m appreciative of so many things he did during my life time – 21 ¾ years of his long 90. I gained so much, I got all these great stories about his childhood with Vic, going around causing problems and being trouble-makers – when he got kicked out of the Scouts because he decided to play rugby instead of helping out at the graveyeard and all these great stories I’ll never forget. The more sombre ones like the trauma of being bombed out which quickly became the trauma of being sent to the hospitals around Birmingham – which I’m sure was a trauma on both parties.

I’ve got to thank him for my passion for sport – if it wasn’t for him, there’s no way I’d have ever started playing golf and never probably have watched much cricket. Going to his house and sitting there, enduring a few 5-day tests, I was hooked. And now I can’t get enough. There were so many sporting things we did together, when he came over we’d go buy golf clubs from Oxfam and go smash them up at the driving range – and often they would smash and fall apart as they weren’t very good! But that was part of the fun.

There’s a lot we can be happy and a lot I can be happy about spending time with him for, and so yeah, I thought I’d send this little message and I’m thinking of all of you today and have been for the last few weeks and I send lots of love and I hope this finds everyone well.

This is Val's (Ken's younge sister) speech that she gave at Ken's funeral:

The time has come to say goodbye to Ken. This is a very sad time for me as Ken has been my big brother for nearly eighty years.

He was a loving, kind, thoughtful and helpful brother.

There were times when we did not see much of each other – when he was in the Marines – when I was in Canada. However for most of the time we have been close and, over the past few years, very close.

Ken had a long and full life. He was well educated, but was very modest about it. He enjoyed socialising, the theatre, music, gardening and most sports. During his life he took part in swimming, tennis, cricket, rugby and bowls. He even played darts when Bill and his friends had a regular darts night at Haunch Lane. But he was not a competitive participant. He played because he enjoyed the game and the company.

He was a keen member of The Pines Youth Club (started by our father in the mid 1940s) and kept members together for many years by organising an annual reunion and later when members dwindled a lunch at the Tidbury Green Golf Club.

He was very much a family man and he and Janet had a very happy life together. They and the children enjoyed many holidays both in the UK and abroad and made numerous friends. They joined various organisations – U3A and the Wythall Gardening Club to name only two and went on outings together – we even joined them sometimes. They were members of the National Trust and English Heritage and visited lots of stately homes and gardens.

Ken had a good sense of humour – sometimes a wicked one in his younger days - but it was never hurtful. He was always willing to help someone and when our parents were older he thought nothing of travelling the 80 or so miles each way every week with friend, Basil, to visit them in Llandrindod.

After Janet died Ken was devastated and for a while he was very down. This was followed not long after by two very serious operations and the death of our brother, Vic. But, like the stoic he was, he recovered and carried on living his life to the full, with the help of his family and good friends.

About five years ago his health started to deteriorate and one lot of tablets seemed to follow another until in the end it was a wonder he didn’t rattle. But – he made his 90th birthday – and we celebrated that in style. The last few months, however, saw him slowly lose his battle, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak, as the saying goes. He always said he wanted to die at home and, with the help of his children and some very good carers, he was able to do that. It was what he wanted.

I would now like to read a few words that I feel Ken would agree with ……


Feel no guilt in laughter he’d know how much you care.

Feel no sorrow in a smile that he’s not there to share.

You cannot grieve for ever he wouldn’t want you to

He’d hope that you would carry on the way you always do.

So, talk about the good times and the way you showed you cared.

The days you spent together, all the happiness you shared.

Let memories surround you, a word someone may say

Will suddenly recapture a time, an hour, a day

That brings him back as clearly as though he were still here

And fills you with the feeling that he is always near.

For if you keep those moments, you’lll never be apart.

And he will live forever safely locked in your heart.


He will always be in mine.

The speech that Jane (Ken's eldest daughter) gave at Ken's funeral

Memories of Ken:
18 years ago this spring we came to this very churchyard to bury my mother Janet. The message on Ken’s bouquet of spring flowers said ‘not goodbye but au revoir’. After a few months he chose a granite stone in the shape of an open book, with a page of loving tribute to her. On our visits to put more flowers on the grave I would ask him what he wanted us to write on the empty page of the gravestone when his time came. He said we should write the words ‘…AND KEN’ but his life is worth more words than that. He has devotedly tended Janet’s grave all these years, and today, here he is, as he promised her.
Thank you so much for being here with us today – it is really comforting, but it is so strange to be at any family occasion where there is not a speech from Ken. I can’t help thinking he will get up in a minute and talk at some length – as he did only recently at his 90th birthday party. Some of you will remember when he spoke at Nanny Morris’s funeral, 26 years ago. His voice cracked a few times – please bear with me if this happens to me.
Ken was born in Birmingham. It was less than a decade after the first world war, when so many young men had been killed, and he told me that as a result his childhood was dominated by women. He enjoyed and inspired the love of women all his life – this is a man who was still receiving valentines at the age of 90 – and in his bedside cabinet he always kept a love letter from my mother at the end of her life.
He remembered a good childhood with Vic and later Val, in the house in Shutlock lane. He was free to play in the local parks, and continued to enjoy them all his life. He walked to and from school twice a day, and if the mothers were playing tennis at lunchtime the children helped themselves to chunks of Nanny’s famous bread pudding and strolled back to afternoon school. His boyhood was a series of adventures somewhere between Biggles and the Beano. If you haven’t already heard the air rifle and bird down the chimney story or grandad and the fireworks in the outside toilet story, you have only to come along to the Orange Tree pub after the burial and one of the family members will regale you.
You might also hear how his father – Grandad Morris - was a bit of a boy racer, who would deliver the Birmingham Dispatch at high speed around twisty country lanes with his sons hanging on to the open car. He taught Ken how to dig for victory on the allotment in the park, and inculcated a love of gardening in both sons. Ken always spoke of Vic, his younger brother, with immense admiration of his prowess at sports and of Vic’s kindness and generosity. Of course, there was rough and tumble between the brothers. I remember Vic pushing Ken off a climbing frame and breaking his arm. I particularly remember it because they were in their 40s at the time.
During the second world war Ken was a pupil at King Edwards School. He was grateful all his life for the education and comradeship he enjoyed there, and has given substantial monthly donations to the school so that working class boys can continue to benefit, as he did, from high quality education. He was in the same class as the critic and playwright Kennth Tynan, and had a walk on part in Tynan’s first play ‘Hell’s a Poppin’, in which he had to run aimlessly around the stage in his rugby kit. You can read more about this, and about the eponymous ‘Through the Classroom Window’ episode in the book published by his U3A group 60 years later.
However, when Ken was still only 11 years old he was evacuated to the village of Repton in Derbyshire. He and 5 other boys had to sleep in a squash court owned by the local doctor, and though a lifelong vegetarian, he was forced to eat meat. He pined away, until in the end his mother rescued him and took him back home. The experience traumatised him deeply. Even as an old man Ken absolutely hated being sent away from home into the care of doctors. He couldn’t tolerate use of an oxygen mask - he thought the nurses were trying to smother him with a gas mask. He insisted that the hospital made him eat food unsuitable for vegetarians, he plotted daring escapes, and he would be touchingly grateful when Val or Bill or Alice brought him back home.
Last week Bill and I discovered Ken’s school reports in his bureau. His grandchildren predicted they would say he was a terrible prankster, but no, he was a good boy: a quiet, keen, conscientious student From his earliest years the English teachers remark on his particular ability to read poetry out loud! That surprised some of us, but it would have been excellent training for his public speaking, and when I was young he would offer me a penny for every poem I could recite by heart.
By the time Ken was in the 5th form at school he had joined the Air Cadets. He fired rifles, signalled with Morse code, fell out of trees and got stung by wasps at camp. He went gliding and flew in war planes, kitted out with a parachute. After school he did national service in the Royal Marines. Nanny Morris said this experience changed him forever from being a good, poetic boy. He learned to drink and swear and sing rude words to hymn tunes. In fact he continued to embarrass us at school carol services for years with that particular trick.
In the Marines he was stationed at Barnstaple in Devon, where he played for the County cricket team, attended parties with debutantes in local stately homes, and wrecked the chandelier in a local church by smashing it with a flagpole during church parade. As a punishment he was made to march round town at the head of the Band of the Royal Marines – he just loved that. As a child I saw him as a glamorous figure, but of course he downplayed the grim and dangerous side of his experience. He undertook landmine clearance on Dartmoor, and whilst still in his teens took command of a ship sailing round the coast of Britain in difficult conditions.
Back home in Brandwood Park Road, Nanny and Grandad had set up the Pines youth club with Ken, Vic and Val as founding members. By the time I was born all the Pines were like family, and later in life, they resurrected the club, with annual nostalgic reunions that raised money for leukemia research and revived friendships which, for Ken lasted beyond the grave – he has attended all too many funerals of dear friends from the Club but found it comforting that they could enjoy and endure old age together.
Ken was a good father to me, Jen and William. He lived family life to the full – he was playful and eccentric. He genuinely adored games and we were always playing something – cards, chess, rummikub, crosswords. He taught us when we played scrabble to add up our joint scores, but he wasn’t afraid to win and lose either.
Ken was curious, appreciative and constructive – he explored the worlds of books and languages, music and art – he taught us all to swim, he took us camping round Europe in the 1951 Rover 75 – 7 of us and a tent worthy of Agincourt. In 1968 he took us to Prague to stay with friends and experience the political changes of the Prague Spring. When the Russian tanks invaded, we had to flee across the Austrian border.
Ken worked hard to support his family, but his professional work was not his real joy. We called him Toad of Toad Hall because of his various passionate crazes and interests. He collected postcards and antiques – or at least good class junk. He studied geology and made gemstones into jewellery, he studied local history and took a degree with the Open University. Wherever he travelled he learned at least a smattering of the language – our shelves bulged with Teach Yourself Welsh, Russian, even Czech. He researched his family tree –and other people’s family trees. He loved marbles and skittles and conkers. He collected books, art, crafts, pictures and posters, so the house never really needed wallpaper. Even the toilet walls were plastered with educational material – my daughter learned Victorian history sitting on his loo! Children loved him – he was one of them. Women loved him too. Mum complained her friends all told her how lucky she was to be married to Ken. She said he was the lucky one.
When I went to university he would drive up – now in a navy blue Rover 3 litre - and take us out to lunch – me and Peter and all our hungry student friends. Every week he wrote to me enclosing a stamped addressed envelope, and I would fill it with theatre and concert programmes I had scribbled on. When Jen went to Girton he was so worried she would starve that he stuffed her winter boots with apples. Before winter came she was alarmed by the scent of fermenting cider from her cupboard and the boots were ruined.
He took early retirement and loved playing with his friends again, and with Bill and his generation. He joined the University of the 3rd Age where new and old friends got together and travelled the world – more luxuriously than in our camping days. After the left wing politics and atheism of his youth he lurched to the other end of the political spectrum. His obsessive dislike of Tony Blair is legendary – but it turns out he did have a point. When his family refused to listen to his diatribes, he began writing to politicians. His correspondence includes letters from a succession of MPs and even from the Ministry of Defence, justifying in great detail the country’s military strategy in the Middle East. Why were young men still being sent to die, he had asked. Perhaps we should drop a line to the Houses of Parliament, to let them know they can stop their researches on behalf of Mr Morris – that should free up a whole department of the Civil Service.
Ken looked after Janet lovingly and was devastated by her death, but he never lost his faith in the beauty of life. He would still listen to the music of Schubert and Beethoven and Elvis too. I remember in the midst of his grief he pointed out frost patterns on a spiders web. He explored National Trust Houses, English Heritage, Wythall Gardening Club, the Motor Museum, the Midlands Institute, Cannon Hill Arts Centre and the joys of Sky Sport. He cherished every generation of his extended family. He was particularly special to each of his 5 grandchildren, and rejoiced in their careers, activities, adventures and relationships. He always took a loving interest in all the generations of Val’s family too.
Ken’s lifelong friend Vincent had also died in the year 2000, and some years later Ken enjoyed a very happy relationship with his widow Jean. Under her influence he accepted heart surgery and kidney surgery and patched up his body for a new lease of life.
Everyone here has some memory of Ken which makes them smile. He was a generous person and a good citizen. He loved life tenaciously and taught so many of us to relish it too. I could say so much more, would I’ll finish now, with the words his form master wrote at the end of his final year’s school report, in 1944.
‘His work and conduct have been very good. I am sorry to lose him.’

Remembering and celebrating Ken's warm, welcoming and engaged manner.