Arthur tends war memorial for 77 years
Gardening gurus of today have nothing on 92-year-old war veteran Arthur Trow who has been honoured for a lifetime's devotion to duty keeping grass around his village war memorial looking spic and span.
Arthur, who will celebrate his 93rd birthday on May 17, has cut and maintained the land around the war memorial in his home village for the past 77 years. He has been spurred on in his work by personal memories of many families of the fallen listed on the memorial in Churchill, near Kidderminster.
Now he has decided the half-a-mile round trip there and back with his motor mower, in all weathers, is just too much and he has finally decided to hand over the task to the local Parish Lengthsman.
For his unstinting service to the community, members of the Blakedown and Hagley branch of the Royal British Legion yesterday presented him with a framed certificate and a cheque.
He still grows his own vegetables and has forgotten more than most ever know about gardening having been a son-of-the-soil all his life.
His life as a gardener began almost immediately he left Churchill School at 14 and two years later he became garden boy at the local rectory.
He said: "That was how I made my first contact with mowing the war memorial lawn. Previously it had been done on a voluntary basis by the gardeners of the four large houses in the village.
"I continued to mow the grass but changed jobs when a clergyman left in 1937 and then worked on the Hagley Hall estate until I was called up early in 1940.
"I joined The Kings Shropshire Light Infantry and later the Army Service Corp, coming out in February 1946."
When he returned to the village he became a full-time gardener and driver at Churchill House. Arthur ended his official working life as groundsman at Halesowen Grammar School when he was 64.
Despite retirement, Arthur has continued to lovingly tend the war memorial lawn and his own cottage garden.
He married wife Mary 63 years ago on July 20, 1946.
