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Kate writes: "Our amazing Founder Member Phyllis Charlesworth will be 100 on the 1st February. I have purchased a beautiful 100th Birthday Card - and would like to send it to Phyllis on behalf of Chat Line Soroptimists around the world. If you would send me your messages I will print out a small booklet and put it in the envelope with the card. George and I will be taking cards and flowers to Phyllis on her birthday.
"Phyllis is quite remarkable and one of the highlights of my second stint as Club President in 1995, was when I asked her (and our other octogenarians) to talk about their 'life and times'. We learnt that Phyllis was a farmer's daughter who had attended the Cheshire School of Agriculture as a very young girl and learnt cheese and butter making - going home to her parents farm to work! She eventually met and married the son of a Cheshire farmer and moved to his home just outside Nantwich - where the family (I believe one of her grandsons) farms today.
"I understand in the 1940's there was a move in the UK to find 'suitable women' and appoint them 'Justice of the Peace', to sit on the local Magistrate's Bench (the local Court where cases are heard by lay Magistrates). Phyllis was approached and was one of the first women Magistrates in the country. She was a member of this lay Judiciary Court for many years.
"A Founder Member when our Club was Chartered in 1950(and currently our only Honorary Member), Phyllis was President in 1952-1953. Until a couple of years ago she attended our meetings in the summer months, but preferred not to venture out at night during the winter. She announced to me on her 96th birthday "I have given up driving today - I've been on the road for 80 years"!
"Phyllis is very frail now, but still lives in her own home where the family have organised a of carers to look after her. Thankfully she is still active and our Club are hoping we can organise something special for her birthday.
"Meryl will recall that at our Golden Jubilee Dinner, Phyllis read the Objects of Soroptimism, and was also presented with the framed counted cross stitch Soroptimist emblem -stitched by my son Ian and his former wife Rachel (then our Treasurer)."
On February 1st Kate Moore wrote further:
"Dear Chat Liners
"Realising that Phyllis would have a busy day planned for her 100th
birthday today, I visited her yesterday afternoon to give her your birthday greetings.
"Knowing she would receive many flowers, I took her a small bouquet of sweet smelling spring flowers - including jonquils, freesias, hyacinths (plus tulips and anemones). I printed
a booklet with all your lovely messages - on the front cover was the
beautiful photograph Pnina sent me with her message for Phyllis.
"Phyllis quickly looked through the booklet and was amazed to see
greetings from Alaska to Japan, and from Chat Liners all over the world. She said when things quieten down, she will take time to look through them all.
