MARGARET WEBBER
November 21, 2005.

I began collecting Denmark some 30 years ago, and was soon dealing with Chris Jahr at April Scottish Congress. My first contacts with Margaret were inevitably through Chris. For more than 20 years we met every April, and then every September at the Perth Viking meetings, then Glasgow Autumn Scotex, Stampex, etc. Through these meetings, I started attending the SPS AGM, as it travelled the country, my first being Bromsgrove in 1990. It was never Margaret, if either of us failed to attend.

For all our contacts, Margaret remained a very private person. Musical, she played piano and violin, and loved antiques but above all, stamps. Widowed in 1965 and with no family, she is survived by her sister, to whom we send our condolences. At her funeral, it was disclosed that Margaret was born on a farm in Dunlop in Ayrshire, 1916, and had trained as a teacher of Domestic Science. This Scots origin surprised many of us, as we thought from her accent that she was English! During the war, she returned to the farm, met her husband and married. She and her husband were friends of Chris Jahr and his wife for many years, and following the death of their respective partners, she accompanied Chris to all of his stamp meetings and the SPS week-ends. Chris’s death was a great loss to her, but she earnestly continued her philatelic journeys. She never missed an opportunity to meet with her stamp friends, turning up regularly I’m assured at provincial meetings in Ibstock, St. Helens, Cambridge, etc. In places which many of us fitter members considered too far away to make it in a day, Margaret would be there with her regular car and driver, Clive. So often in fact, that Clive could have become an honorary member of the SPS. If you remarked on how far she had come or how wonderful it was she had made the effort , she told you: " I count these trips my holidays. What else would I spend my money on ?". Looking younger than her almost 90 years, fresh from her hairdresser and smartly turned out, she was always an early arrival, ready to greet you with a lovely smile, and a cheery: "How are you?".

Leaning on a walking stick after her hip replacement, she could always be counted on to produce the requisite number of sheets for a meeting display: "Norway Hotel Postcards"," Göta Canal", "Royalty", "Norway Byposts", "Music", "Song titles". Sometimes a little off beat and idiosyncratic, the display was always introduced in the same few words: “I don’t need to say anything, it’s all there, it’s all written up”.

Latterly after the fall at Buckingham damaged her hip, she had a spell in hospital and was confined her to the house, missing the Vikings and the St Helens meetings for the first time. To my regret, bad weather with the first snowfall of the winter prevented me from travelling to her funeral. We will all miss her, our meetings will not be the same without her.

Alex Walker

Obituary in March/2006 issue of "Scandinavian Contact"