A WOMAN who may have been Barnsley’s oldest has died at the age of 104 after living through some of the most important events in history and doing her part to protect the nation.
Mary Brook - nee Romans - lived through the premiership of 22 Prime Ministers, two Kings, one Queen and the entirety of World War Two.
However, she didn’t passively sit through to watch these things take place and joined up with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) to help the Allies in their fight against the Nazis.
The service was founded in 1938 and tasked women with a range of vital roles that could free up male soldiers for combat.
Around a decade ago, Mary wrote of her time serving, saying: “The time was January 1940 and I was 19 years of age and amongst the first group of women, ever, to be called up for National Service.
“I ‘signed up’ and after an intensive physical examination and form filling.
“I caught the train from the Court House station along with two other local girls, to Durham. At Neville’s Cross, which was previously a boys’ boarding school, I was to do my training.
“We were a mixed bunch and from all over the country - I shared a bunk-bed with two other girls; we were all strangers.
“So began a three-week training process of being changed from ordinary civilians into female soldiers.
“It was a devastating, arduous and emotional process; some of us wept with homesickness, most had never been away from home before.
“So many things happened to me during my army service - I was plunged into the deep end of experience and saw a part of life I couldn’t have done but for the war.”
The title of Barnsley’s oldest person was previously held by 110-year-old Margaret Hammond, who was born on Wombwell High Street on May 25, 1912 and was the sixth oldest person in the UK when she died on December 19, 2022.
Barnsley has had a history of record-breaking ages, as Ethel Lang was the oldest living person in the UK and second-oldest in Europe when she died in 2015.
But for her family, Mary’s age was just an opportunity for her to meet more people who loved her - as prior to her death on January 2 she made up one of five generations.
She spent 40 years with her husband Harry, who died in the early 1980s and has four great-great-grandchildren.
The final years of her life were spent at Eboracum, a care home near Locke Park, after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and broke her hip following a fall at her home in 2020.
Her eldest daughter, 80-year-old Sandra Dickinson, told the Chronicle that she was a ‘strong woman’ who’d have been ‘absolutely thrilled to bits’ to be called the town’s oldest person.
“She always had ideas, she’d say ‘I’m going out, I’m not just sitting at home’,” Sandra added.
“After dad died she used to go shopping - she’d get on the bus down into Sheffield, do some shopping, have tea and then come home.
“She’d do that until she started with Alzheimer’s really.
“But she always listened to my dad - she’d say something and she knew she’d have gone too far when he went ‘Mary’.
“She’d talk about how ‘we’re having a new suite, we’re having a new set of curtains’ and he’d just go ‘Mary’.
“He was a quiet chap, he didn’t often say anything and never shouted, but when he said her name with that tone of voice she paid attention.
“If she’d have learnt she was the oldest person in Barnsley she’d want to celebrate, she’d say ‘we have to drink to that’ and she always liked her gin and tonics.”
Mary died on January 2 and her funeral service will be held at Barnsley Crematorium on January 31.
