Alan King (19 May 1924 - 30 Dec 2021)

With much sadness his family announce that, following a short illness, Alan reached the end of his long life on Thursday 30th December 2021. Within his family he was a much-loved Husband, Father, Brother, Uncle, Grandfather and Great Grandfather; in the wider community he will be missed as a much respected comrade and loyal friend. There will be a private family funeral followed by a Memorial Service on Sunday 6th February at 2.30pm at Horham Baptist Church. You are asked to take an LFT test before attending and to please wear a mask at the service. Thank you.
Donations for the London Taxi Charity for Military Veterans may be sent to Susan Whymark Funeral Service Ltd, Chestnut House, 12, Progress Way, Eye, IP23 7HU or online at www.susanwhymark.co.uk

Alan King 19th May 1924 - 30th December 1921

Alan King was born in 1924 and grew up in Brome. He was called up at the end of 1942 and spent the following 18months training for the invasion of Europe. He was one of the first to land in Normandy and with his regiment fought his way across northern France, took part in the liberation of Holland and then crossed the Rhine. He wasn’t demobbed until 1947, his final duty as a guard in a prison camp. The horrors of war shaped and haunted him for the rest of his life.

Alan married Nora in 1949. They had known each other since they were 4 years old. He was 16 days younger than Nora and for sixteen days every year he was merciless in his reminding her of that age difference

His children remember a resourceful man who made their furniture and toys. A wonderful ship built around a bicycle for the Coronation parade in Eye, dolls houses, model airfields, model fairgrounds, sailing ships, dressing tables bookcases and much more. Despite the austerity of the 1950s he and Nora saved all year for the annual caravan holiday in Great Yarmouth., Joyce remembers that they saved 2/6d or half a crown a week. They made the holiday as wonderful an experience as they could. The first thing he did on arrival was to buy tickets for all the shows. Every day there was something very exciting to do, a variety show, the circus, the pleasure beach, a trip on a pleasure cruiser; magic that his children tried to recreate with their own families.

He was a real countryman, keeping chickens and each year he helped his own father collect honey from the beehives kept in his father’s garden. He loved gardening; he grew vegetables and flowers and especially loved tulips. `In the early years of his marriage he tended his own large garden and an allotment. He picked flowers on Friday evenings and took them home in a cart fixed to the back of his bicycle. Christine remembers sitting amongst the flowers and stopping for a banana flavoured icy lolly on the way home. Ray used to sell the flowers from the basket of an old delivery bike on a Saturday morning.

Like many men of his generation he was too busy at work to spend much time with his children but he certainly made up for that with the next generation. His grandchildren and great grandchildren remember a man full of mischief and fun. The Easter egg tree, long walks along the coast and through the woods, love of Christmas magic and his very large garden gnome collection. Those gnomes all had their own story to tell, and he once really confused an American tourist who was looking for the church, when he explained that one of the gnomes was a shop steward and had ordered all the others not to work for the rest of the day. Alan loved the very old Disney cartoon films that he first saw as a boy at the cinema in Diss and enjoyed watching them again as they became available on DVD. They of course reminded him of a more innocent age, of his boyhood, before the war.

Alan was an avid reader. When living in Eye he was an enthusiastic library user, usually borrowing up to six books per week. His taste in reading was wide. He liked history, engineering, biography, and had a remarkable memory for all that interested him. They both loved crosswords and when Nora died, Dad’s dyslexia became very evident as couldn’t do the crosswords without her to check his spelling. It must have been very frustrating. Some of his thinking was way before its time. As early as the 1950s he was advocating the use of wind and wave power, the use of hydrogen as fuel for transport. He and Nora opposed and campaigned against the closure of the railway branch lines. He supported Nora when she trained as a lay reader and was also a very enthusiastic supporter of women priests in the CofE.

Alan began his working life as a wood turner but spent most of it working as an engineer, first at Hartismere hospital and then at several Maltings, looking after steam boilers. He moved to Thornham Parva in 1967. Together with Nora he was very involved in the life of the church, he maintained the churchyard in a volunteer capacity for many years. They picked fruit together from which Nora made jam which was sold to raise funds for the church. Among other things, this money paid for the lovely church gates, the draft proof door curtains and the making up of the stitched kneelers. Many of the kneelers were stitched by Alan and Nora. Nora spun wool which Alan used to make rugs, he also made many needlepoints which can be best described as paintings in wool. He gifted these needlepoints to many people who love and value them. Sadly there is a needlepoint, left in his sitting room, that he couldn’t finish because of problems with his hands.

Following his retirement Alan was a volunteer warden on the Thornham Estate, loving spending his days among the trees and wildlife. He was a local tree warden and a member of the Civil Defence for Thornham. Following Nora’s death he became a member of the Royal British Legion and of the Normandy Veteran’s association. He was president of Stradbroke British Legion.
He was given Maundy Money by the Queen in Bury St. Edmunds Cathedral in 2009 and awarded the Legion D’Honneur in a lovely ceremony in the French Ambassador’s residence in London in 2015.
During the last years of his life he made many trips to Normandy and Holland. Let’s hope it brought him some peace.