Carol Margaret (Donnison) Weston (1950 - 2019)

Born 15 Sep 1950 in St Helens, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom

Ancestors

Died 6 Feb 2019 in Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford, Essex

Profile manager: JG Weston [send private message]

Biography

Carol (Donnison) Weston was born on the 15th September 1950 at St Helens in Lancashire and died on the 6th February 2019 at Chelmsford. She was married to JG Weston on 19 November 1988 at Brentwood, Essex ^[1].

Childhood

Having no siblings her cousin, Nick Hough, was a surrogate brother. She went to school at Huyton College [1], and although a Lancashire lass, thereby acquired a neutral accent. When she was thirteen her father became the optician/pharmacist for the Coop at Coventry and they moved there. She attended Barrs Hill [2] from 1963 to 1968. Her father had a Ford Mark I Console which was called Ollie.

University and early career

She went to St Andrews University [3], with 6 months at the Sorbonne [4], and got an M.A. in French. She met her first husband at St Andrews and they were married at Coventry in 1971. After graduation she got a job teaching French at Sweyne Rayleigh. When micro computers first started appearing in schools, they got one at Sweyne. Carol got interested and realised a career change might be a good idea. She applied for and got a place on a TOPS [5] course at Grays Technical College and after a training placement with Ford during the course, applied for and got a job in the Systems Office at Ford's Central Office at Warley, working on the Salary Roll Payroll system. She asked her supervisor on the first day how many others were working on the team. "Oh, just you", he replied. This was a rude shock, and she wondered what she had let herself in for. Luckily she had an aptitude for programming and this was not a problem.

Career at Ford

She remained at Ford, working at Warley, until she retired in 2011. She worked mainly in Payroll, Software and Equipment Support (later renamed Software and Productivity Support) and Office Productivity departments. Towards the end of her Ford career she worked partly from home with a concept called Hot-desking and using the internet with VPN so that she could access Ford central network from home.

Second marriage

She married JG Weston in November 1988 at Brentwood, and lived there, opposite Ford Central Office for a year, but then moved to South Woodham Ferrers. She was very much on the Arts side but her husband was very much on the Science side. They influenced each other and did many Open university courses together and some different ones. She got a second degree, a BSc, from the OU studying Philosophy, Psychology, Astro Physics, Paleantology and Geology, among others. Her husband introduced her to bird watching and she became adept at being able to name birds at a distance.

U3A

She joined the South Woodham Ferrers U3A [6] in 2007, soon after it started in South Woodham Ferrers and has been a member of many groups. Just before her death she was still an active member of the Science and Technology and Digital Photography groups and she taught French to the French group.

Photography

She always had an interest in photography starting with an SLR (Zenith) and an Olympus Trip. When the digital cameras first came out, Carol, like many of us, saw the benefit of no longer having to worry about how many images one took, cost was no longer an issue. Many people looked down on digital as the early low resolutions were no match for the quality of film. Carol stuck with it though and learnt how to get the best out of Photoshop as well as the Camera and improve by entering club competitions. She took the digital courses offered by Steve Hedges and learnt much from the digital photography group of the U3A. She became an accomplished photographer.

Sources

1. ↑ Source: #S5

• Source: S5 Ancestry.com England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005 Publication: Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2010; Repository: #R1
• Source: Personal recollection of her husband, JG Weston in February 2019 [7].
• Repository: R1 Ancestry.com

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