Wendy Wallbridge
On the weekend Sean and I spent time with his grandmother. We wanted to record her as she told us her life story. She has witnessed so many things in her lifetime and has an amazing memory for details.
She was born almost 95 years ago in Liverpool, England. When she was a teenager in the 1940’s she left school to work in a records office during WWII. After the war started the streetcars weren’t operational as the roads were torn up from the German bombs. One day on her long walk to work she arrived at her building only to find that it had been struck by a bomb in the night. There was now a fire hose on the top floor of the building spraying water all over her handwritten records. It took until the end of the war to painstakingly decipher and rewrite all of the records.
Fast-forward to last weekend. I just had to smile when at the end of the day Sean proudly announced that he had set up her very first Facebook account! She has had a computer for ages and ages, but she had never used Facebook. She was pretty excited about being able to see all of the pictures and videos of the great-grandchildren and I think she was happy to feel a little more connected to the latest news. The best part was that she already had a ton of Facebook friends by the time we left her house!
I’m sure in the last 95 years Sean’s grandmother has seen her share of useful inventions (such as a pencil with an eraser attached at the end when she left England and came to Canada), but I think it’s pretty cool to see that you’re never too old to be impressed by a new invention.
Who knows – maybe she’ll even be blogging soon!
~Wendy~