“LITTLE TOM”---AN APPRECIATION.

Although to outward appearance the life of the Branch has been just as unusual, yet there has been a shadow between us and the sun, as if a dark thunder-cloud was rolling up from the horizon. But it was not a thundercloud, but the wings of the Angel of Death. Our good friend and member, “Little Tom” Howes, has passed on, and the wide smile and jaunty step are no more.

There are many people in Sprowston who remember him as a hairdresser (was not one of his jobs of service in Toc H to visit bedridden members of the Old People’s Club and give them a “trim-up”?) others knew him as a man who could turn his hand to almost any practical job, or as a member of the British Legion, or the Church Social Activities Committee, or more lately as a worker for the Methodist Church.

In Toc H we Remember him as a member of the little band who joined the movement when the branch was first started in Sprowston in January 1947. He was our first ‘Jobmaster’ for a full year, and we could recall only one grumble---that Little Tom was so keen that he was willing to take the whole burden of “jobs” on to his own shoulders rather than to place them on the backs of the rest of the membership. We remember him also for his unfailing cheerfulness, his shrewd common sense, and his zest for life. Tom loved arranging excursions and members of the Church congregations will recall the many trips he organised as Secretary of the Social Activities Committee. Our own strongest memory in this field is of a certain trip to London for the Annual Toc H Festival, when Scotland Yard had to be called in to trace our missing bus.

Our hearts go out to Mrs Howes and her family in their sorrow. We, for our part, will be able to bring deeper meaning to our ceremony of “Light”, for we now have an “Elder Brother”, and the words of Laurence Binyon will from henceforth have a more personal meaning:-

“They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the year’s condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember them.”

EXTENSION TO WROXHAM.

The branch has been very happy to respond to an invitation to meet some good folk at Wroxham who wanted to hear more about Toc H. There is every hope that a strong Toc H Unit will grow in Wroxham and Hoveton under the leadership of Wroxham’s Station-master, Mr. Chappell.