Thirty-six years ago I started work as a caretaker in a block of high-rise flats.  On my first day I made friends with a 90 year old lady (who I shall call Sally) who invited me in, got me to make us both a hot cuppa and told me about her life.  Sally was born to very poor parents in a back-to-back house in Birmingham and by the time she got to marrying age she was glad to escape the mental and physical torture she received at the hands of an abusive Father.  Sally saw marriage as an escape; unfortunately she jumped out of the frying pan and straight into the hands of a womanising wife beater. After having twelve children, bones broken and after living a life of total drudgery, a massive heart attack came to Sally’s aid and killed her husband.

Her children, many of them abused by their father never came to visit Sally, her whole life now was spent sitting in her one bed flat staring at the walls waiting for her Carer (who I shall call ‘Elaine’) to come and give her a bath, Elaine was someone who would listen and talk kindly to Sally, something Sally had never had in her life. Sally loved Elaine and wished her Children could have turned out as nice as her.

I had only been in my job a month when Sally died, funnily enough on the same day that they were informed of her death, her whole family came to visit, something they had never done before. They went through everything even taking a wet tea towel that Sally had dried her breakfast things on the day she died. I was disgusted but held my tongue until the last of them had gone.  After her tenancy ran out the Council lads moved in and within 60 minutes the flat was clean, all the remnants of her property that held no value to her offspring had been thrown into a skip.  I looked over the edge and saw photographs, Sally’s papers, certificates, every trace of her life was being sent to the tip, no one would ever know that she’d existed, her 90 years of life and all of her history had gone.

I was with the Housing Department for over twenty years and in that time I have seen hundreds of properties being emptied after the death of a solitary tenant or if they had been placed in a rest home. The clean up operation was always the same, people’s private papers, photographs of their families, medals and certificates of achievement, if not worth money to the family or the Council were just thrown into skips.

All of those people were born in Brummagem they married, had children, fought Wars and lost family and friends in the bombing, they suffered during the depression but they managed.  They were never high enough on the social ladder to have anything written about them. They will never appear in the Who’s Who like the Lord Mayor, Councillors or the well off in our City they will just be forgotten as if they had never existed.

This upset me a lot and now thirty six years later I have decided to do something for the Sally’s and people like her born of Brummagem. I have set up “Brummies” a “Who’s Who” of the ordinary working folk of Brummagem; Folk who deserve to be remembered just as dignitaries do.  The rules are simple, send for the information pack, pay your money and the things you write and the photographs you send in will be turned into one page in a never ending book of Brummies that will be open to viewing at our headquarters and on-line.

I’ve put my Dad in, he wasn’t rich or famous but to me he was my hero, he deserves to be remembered, as does your Dad, your Mom, Husband, Wife, Grandfather or even yourself if you live alone and you want to enter your own life story for the children of the future.Send for an information pack and see what you think: