Rhona May Whittick Havers was born on 2nd May 1927 to Henry George and Kathleen McKevitt Whittick, in London. Rhona was the middle child of five, with her two elder siblings being Harry (died 2006) and Doris (also died 2006) and two younger, Donald (currently living in British Columbia, Canada) and Paul (currently living in Bedfordshire).
Rhona’s father, a veteran of the First World War, where he saw service on the Western Front and later in Russia, was a groundsman by profession. The family moved around to various locations where there were sportsgrounds to tend and invariably lived on our close to these premises. World War Two saw Rhona and her younger brother Don, listed for evacuation to Canada, before their mother decided against it. Rhona and the family, save her eldest brother, Harry, who served in the Royal Airforce, lived through the Blitz and saw out the war, working at Blenheim Palace where a number of London based Government Departments had been relocated.
A life-long love of travel was perhaps ignited by a post-war visit to Denmark, with the family of a friend. Here Rhona met C.S Lewis, by chance, in Copenhagen. Rhona began work in the travel business and worked for BOAC and Swissair, amongst other airlines, traveling frequently and extensively in the 1950’s and 1960’s, in what really was the ‘golden age’ of travel. By the late 1960’s she was the manager of BP Travel, with an office overlooking Green Park, of which she was most proud. In 1967 she had her son Robin and a year or so later, bade farewell to London, relocating to Cornwall with her sister, Doris.
In the late 1970’s she moved with Robin to Devon and ultimately to Ottery St. Mary in 1980 where she resided until her death. She was delighted to welcome another Canadian addition to the family when Alana Abbott married Robin in 1992 and more delighted still with her beloved granddaughters, Alice Kathleen, born in 2000 and Olivia Heather, born in 2002, in whom she delighted and they in her.
With many friends here and abroad and especially in the USA, she passed away peacefully, and with her family in attendance, at home with them in Lexington, Virginia, on the 8th March 2018, aged 90 years. Much missed by them and Chelsea the dog and loved in death as much as in life.