Page 17 - br-november-2019

November 2019 November 2019

OBITUARIES

train to join their parents in Germany for the holidays. Fra then
trained at Queen’s Secretarial College in London before securing a
job working for the French boss of Shell in Saigon, Vietnam, where her father
was now the British Military Attaché. Fra relished the military life, travelling
around Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia and, because numbers were so low
in the Embassy, she and Claire were invited to practically every official party.

On returning home, Fra went to Grenoble University on a degree course to
improve her French and afterwards she spoke so well that she was often asked
what part of France she was from.
She flirted with a career in media – she was a disc jockey on the troop ship
back from Vietnam, and had to turn down a job reading the BBC news in
Saigon. Moving back to London, she worked for the advertising firm Mather
and Crowther before working for Cambridge University Press.
While Fra was sharing a flat in London with four good friends, she met John
Solly and they were married in 1965. The young couple moved to London,
where Fra had various jobs before finding a new career in genealogy. She had
the most amazing knowledge and memory of family history facts and stories,
absorbing information like a sponge.
This love of storytelling, combined with her kind and nurturing manner, made
Fra a perfect candidate for a career working with children. When she and
John bought their first house at Chorley in Lancashire, Fra got a job as
teaching assistant in Higher Wheelton School and she loved her time there. Her
next step was to train as a teacher in Ormskirk, but she became pregnant and
was asked to leave the course as women with babies were expected not to
work in those days. Happily, she was able to return to the career that she loved
in later life, running the local playgroup in Whitchurch for many years.
Fra and John had three sons: Robert, Richard, and Mark who sadly died
young. A fun-loving mother, Fra was blessed with a dry sense of humour, which
she often needed to keep her boys under control.

In 1973, the family moved South to Whitchurch-on-
Thames, a pretty Oxfordshire village which became
their home for 18 years. Money was tight and Fra
worked incredibly hard at becoming self-sufficient.
She cycled everywhere, bought a sewing machine
and used it to make all of the family’s curtains and
upholstery. She grew most of the family’s food on
her allotment, or picked it wild. Home-made
goulasch, lasagne, moussaka, Irish stew, bean stew

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