My Dad, Ray, was born eighty years ago today in 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash, and on the day of the Grand Banks Earthquake off Newfoundland. He shares his birthday with Alex Issigonis (1906) – designer of the Mini, astronaut Alan Shepard (1923), Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood (1939), Brit actor David Hemmings (1941) and pop-singer turned gardener Kim Wilde (1960) to name but a few.
Although born in Portsmouth, he’s a long-term Crystal Palace supporter and a big tennis fan; he’s still a season ticket holder and is inordinately proud of the fact that he still plays tennis weekly – his foursome has a combined age of nearly 300 years!
The pic above left shows the bouncing baby, then on the right that’s me with him in about 1962. Below left is from the early 1970s in the gardens at Fontainebleau, and below right from a few years ago – but he’s hardly changed from then. I don’t have that many pictures of him as he has normally been behind the camera – but I have enough!
HAPPY
80th
BIRTHDAY
DAD!
What a great post! Tell him happy birthday! 🙂
Lovely post and lovely photos. Belated happy birthday to your dad.
Thank you both – your kind comments have been passed on and he was quite tickled.We also had great fun last night with a surprise party for him. He, my brother Mike and I are all quiz fiends so we did a special quiz night for him with lots of Dad facts built into the questions – we had over 60 people there and it was a lovely evening.