A founder member of Shrewsbury Severn Rotary Club has died. Brian Leverton, who was the club’s president in 1989/90, was in his nineties. There will be a full tribute to Brian in the coming days.
Below is a report from April 2017.
Shrewsbury Severn Rotary Club has made history……the honouring of a diamond wedding anniversary of one of its longest-serving members. A past president, Rotarian Brian Leverton and his wife Margaret, shared one of their anniversary celebrations with fellow Rotarians. A memorable fellowship evening it turned out to be with another past president Rev Paul Firmin returning to the club to anecdote weddings with which he had been involved.
He said that during his 30 years as a priest he had conducted between 450 and 500 weddings. The fewest in any one year was five when he was at Grinshill. The most in a year: 28. He said the fee to marry at the Abbey Church, where he is presently the vicar, is £450, but the total cost of marrying in a church today is £800. The average age of couples marrying today is 25-34, whereas when he started in the priesthood it was 20-24. “Weddings are huge fun and I have enjoyed almost everyone of them. You meet people today whom you first met 20 years ago, they have three children, and you feel you are very much part of a community.” He added: “I invite people who want to get married and be part of the community to come and see me.”
Addressing fellow Rotarians, Brian described himself as a ‘quiet and shy sort of bloke’ who was ‘surprised at the depth of excitement’ that their 60th wedding anniversary had brought about. He said that he and Margaret had been very fortunate to have reasonable health to continue life if not exactly to the full, fairly closely. The couple had met at Quaintways dance hall in Chester which in those days was the ‘place to go.’ They discovered they had a ‘common taste’ in music which became one of the bonds of their marriage and they were pleased to have been founder members of the Shrewsbury Phoenix Choir.
He described how he wanted to be an engineer and work for Rolls Royce cars and when they moved from Crewe to Leicester he had a 100% mortgage guaranteed by his new employer which enabled them to buy their first house. With their son Tim only months old, he moved back to Rolls Royce in Shrewsbury leaving Margaret to cope with the sale of the house. Then when their second child was born in 1961, Brian was frequently overseas and often for weeks at a time, leaving Margaret to cope with the two little ones in their early life.
He said that in the last 30 years Rotary had been a large part of their lives and Margaret had enjoyed Inner Wheel. Added Brian: “We have enjoyed considerable fellowship with you fellow Rotarians and spouses over the last 30 years that has added much pleasure to our lives and we thank you.”
