Mary Phippen
Mary Phippen, Dartmouth Creative Writers
Sharing a morning of memories with Mary Phippen is a warm and entertaining experience, with Carry On Nursing capers contrasting with wartime drama, island gardening and the recollections of a glamorous Max Factor marketing mogul.
Complex as her story may be, Mary is as uncomplicated as they come, filling her tales with good humoured self mockery and revealing the energy that drives a life lived and loved.
I nearly splutter into my coffee as she confides she is 82 years of age – she looks and acts so much younger.
Always searching for a challenge, Mary joined the Dartmouth Creative Writers as a way to stretch her mind and channel the flow of memories she felt compelled to record.
“I have written since I was 12. I always kept a diary, and I still have them all. I love to tell stories and so many things have happened to me I have plenty of inspiration.
“Creative Writers is wonderful because we are all so different but with the common feeling that we are not happy to just sit, we need to enjoy and expand our lives. We have a tremendous time.”
In the converted attic of her Dartmouth bungalow, with views of the Daymark, Mary has all her diaries within reach and draws on them for her work. Downstairs her husband of 13 years and her “kindred spirit,” Brian, creates brilliant drawings. “Mary tells a marvellous story,” he smiles.
She explains: “Creative Writers is one of the groups that has grown out of the University of the Third Age in Dartmouth, which encourages the study of subjects from French to food, classic studies to scrabble.
“We meet twice a month and read our work to each other, often giving our own interpretation of a shared theme. Our work has been published in a number of books and it is wonderful to meet interesting people whose full lives have taken them to all parts of the world, and who write such entertaining pieces.”
Mary first started writing when she was a 12-year-old girl living in West Wickham in Kent with her parents, two brothers, and her twin sister Christine. It was war time and the shy Mary recorded in her diary how her sleepy village was torn apart: “The German bombers flew right over our family home and dropped their bombs. They were aiming for Biggin Hill. The blitz in London hadn’t yet started but bombs were falling on our little village – and there began my wartime adventure.”
The boys were to stay at home but Mary and Christine were selected by the Children Overseas Reception Board to be evacuated to Canada for the duration of the war.
“We boarded a ship, the Oronsay, with 100 other children in the dead of night with blackout everywhere. We were 13. My sister was confident but I was in her shadow, nervous and dependent – homesick and seasick! It was incredible – 60 ships in convoy sailing over the Atlantic full of children and supplies.
“We reached Canadian shores safely but were the last ship to do so – the City of Benares in our wake was torpedoed mid Atlantic and sank with the loss of 200 lives. It stopped the entire operation – England decided evacuation overseas was too dangerous for its children. Meanwhile we were meeting our new foster parents and I stayed close to them for the next 50 years, returning many times.”
Mary and Christine lived in Stratford, Ontario, with the “beautiful” Frances Strudley and her husband Donald. The couple had no children of their own and lavished all their love on the two girls, encouraging their education and their ambitions, celebrating their very different personalities. Mary said: “Auntie Frances and I would puzzle over the dreaded maths homework and giggle over the omats in my Latin grammar until I caught up with my brainy sister. I came out of her shadow and found my personality.”
Every week during their four year stay, a letter would arrive from England addressed to My Dear Girlies. Their father wrote without fail, a good humoured account of sleeping under the table, the Anderson shelter in the garden, and with an address at the top of the page such as Home Sweet Home, Knocked About A Bit, But Still Home Sweet Home. Mary has all the letters and is in the process of using them to write her own memoires of her unique wartime experience.
“Coming home was hard. Our hearts were in Canada, and where two young girls had departed two young women returned home. But my parents were wonderful and understood that after such an adventure I couldn’t stay in Kent. I desperately wanted to be a nurse and they encouraged me to go to Guy’s Hospital in London.
“I had a starched cap and thick woolly stockings. The work was hard and there was so much to learn – but there was great humour and tremendous enjoyment. I became an SRN and was so proud of my achievement. It set me up for life.”
There were hilarious risqué elements too. An innocent Mary was popular with male patients for her hands-on bedside manner, not realising quite the effect she had and what a tonic she was! Her experiences with one roguish casualty with a twinkling eye form the basis of one of her most entertaining short stories. Nurse, the screens!
London was fun but new horizons beckoned in the form of a campaign to lure English nurses to Bermuda. “One look at the pictures of white sandy beaches and blue skies and I was off!” Mary said.
“We had a ball nursing in Bermuda and I loved it, but I married and had a young daughter, and the shifts became more difficult to manage, so I gave up nursing and turned to make-up.”
Mary became a sales woman for cosmetics and had a flare for the job. She trebled sales and American make-up giant Max Factor came calling. They trained Mary as a stylist, gave her a customised motorised bicycle and she travelled all over Bermuda working the “very American” hard sell and taking the island by storm.
“I was still working with people and making them feel better in themselves, so I suppose there were similarities with nursing. They were exciting and exhausting times, juggling sales drives and predictions with raising my daughter, but they were very fulfilling. I was there 18 years.”
When Mary’s daughter, Tracie, turned 16, Mary decided it was time to return to the UK to finish her education. The two of them came back together and moved to Brixham, and Mary returned to nursing.
“It was back to starched caps and aprons at Torbay – nothing like Bermuda! But the matron was very kind about my ‘funny ways’ and American accent.
“However when Tracie grew up I was on my own with my freedom for the first time in many years, and I realised it was time to make a switch.”
And typically adventurous: “I chose horticulture and went to learn about growing plants on the Isle of Arran – palms which grew well in the warmth of the Gulf Stream. Another island, very different from Bermuda, but my work was hugely absorbing and I loved it.”
Mary stayed in Arran for 10 years before she came back to Dartmouth to be near Tracie and to retire, but said: “I failed as far as retiring goes – I needed to do things. I took up creative writing, photography and the computer, which has opened up research and brought the world into my home in a marvellous way.
“I also joined the Anglo French Society and on a trip to France I met Brian – my soul mate. We have been married nearly 14 years and we had a ball setting up home together. I am so lucky.
“I have had an amazing life and I relish all of it. From a cosy family to being forced to cope with independence and thriving on it, I have had a marvellous time. Life is for living – and always with a sense of humour!”
More information on the University of the Third Age is available at www.u3a.org.uk
First Published December 2009 By The Dart