Florence Star WOOD

Published on 08/09/2023

WOOD Florence Star It is with the deepest sorrow and overwhelming sense of loss that I recall my beautiful, caring and loving lifetime partner, the devoted mother of John and Carol, and Grannie to Moana, Lewie and Harvey. Florence's first few years were spent on the family farm in south Kansas, USA. During WW2 in 1944, John R Leigh, a Bolton man, arrived at a flying training unit in the adjacent state of Oklahoma. Edna and John, both classicists, met at a school event where Edna was teaching. Their friendship flourished and before John returned to the UK they were married. Florence, with her mother and new baby sister, Marjorie, followed in one of the last Atlantic convoys of WW2. A German U-boat that attacked the ships was sunk in the Bay of Biscay. Life in a terraced house in Breightmet, Bolton, and later in a semi-detached in Astley Bridge, where the family lived for many years, could not have been different from the wide open spaces of Kansas. Florence went to school in Bolton, before for a number of years travelling daily to a school on the then US Airforce base at Burtonwood, near Warrington, where her mother taught. She later attended Crewe Teachers' Training School, taught for most of her life in Bolton schools, and studied for an Open University degree largely in mathematics. Florence was also active in the community, becoming probably the first American to become a Queen's Guide. For several years she was linked to the Bolton neighbourhood disputes service and the Lancashire County library. In the summer months she was also a referee in the Bolton Rounders field. Most of all, Florence greatly valued her friendships with family, close friends and colleagues, never more so than following the death of her beloved daughter, Carol. Flo was married for some 60 contented years to Ken, a journalist, and together they wrote a number of books, including her mother's research into Homer and Ancient Greek astronomy

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