Ton up for Aylesbury woman who has lived a remarkable life

Born in Exeter on 20 February 1920, Joan Laming has certainly lived life to its fullest.

When she was two-years-old her family moved to Accra, the capital of Ghana in West Africa.

Continuing to move around a lot, the family were in Birmingham for a while before eventually settling in Cuddington in Aylesbury in 1982.

Described by her daughter Gill Fisher as “family loving” Joan now resides at Avondale Care Home in Aylesbury.

Joan was a shorthand typist by trade but it's in her personal interests that she truly excels. Joan is a keen artist, specialising in water colours, and after she had supposedly retired she took up glass engraving and became so proficient that she ended up teaching it.

Joan met her husband while she was on holiday in Torquay and they married in 1942, during World War Two.

While serving his country in the war Joan's husband was captured and became a prisoner-of-war, but he escaped and trekked across the Pyrenees on foot to get back home to his family. Sadly, he passed away in 2009.

Joan has two daughters, four grandchildren and four great grandchildren and they all attended her party at Avondale – some coming from as far as the Caribbean to be there.

When Joan was born, David Lloyd George was the UK's Prime Minister, as he had been since the latter part of the First World War, and King George V was the reigning monarch.

The sister of US President John F. Kennedy, Kathleen Cavendish, was born on the same day as Joan, 20 February 1920.

In the same week that she was born, 100 years ago, a man called Adolf Hitler first presented his idea of a National Socialist program to The German Workers Party in Munich. The then unknown fledgling speaker would of course eventually become the party's leader and rename it The Nazi Party.

Joan's birth preceded the first public demonstration of television by five years, the discovery of penicillin by eight years and the invention of the Internet by 70 years!

Happy birthday Joan from all at the Bucks Herald! We hope you had a wonderful day!