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Mrs
June and Mr Fred Lawrence
~ a tribute by John Williams
It was with great sadness that I learned, first, of the death
of June Lawrence (formerly June Bond) on 11th April, followed
shortly afterwards on 5th May by her husband, Fred Lawrence.
Both were in their 92nd year. They were, in their way, pillars
of the Kennel Club staff who devoted themselves unstintingly
from the 1940s to the mid-seventies to the service of the Kennel
Club. Loyalty was their watchword.
Comparatively few now in the world of dogs will have known them
personally. They were long-term ‘club servants’, to
use the old-fashioned phrase only recently removed from the
Constitution of the KC, through the years of Chairmen Croxton
Smith, Air Commodore Allan Cecil-Wright and Sir Richard Glyn,
through the years of KC Secretaries Ted Holland Buckley and
Charles Binney - and I had the benefit of their invaluable experience
and contributions in the last few years of their employment
and the pleasure of their continuing friendship afterwards.
June first married Reg Bond, a splendid man in the same mould,
who joined the Kennel Club staff in 1937 and became House Manager.
She joined him later as Assistant House Manager and, with her
cheerful, efficient and ever helpful personality, endeared herself
to the KC members and the staff with whom she constantly came
into contact in the Clubhouse.
But best of all was her vitality and the enthusiastic way in
which she joined her husband in the general running of the establishment.
They were a co-ordinated team which dealt with a mass of differing
detail and included, amongst other things, providing weekday
lunch and facilities for KC members and the 100-strong staff,
maintenance and security of the Clubhouse, arrangements for
daily cleaning and care of the many rooms and offices whilst
coping with the constant stream of demands and requests from
all sides. Their planning and accounting, always immaculate,
was carried out after club and office doors had closed for the
day and at weekends.
June retired from her position in 1974, and Reg, suffering at
the time from ill health, retired a year later, after 38 years
of service with the Kennel Club.
Fred Lawrence, known to most as ‘Lawrie’, was another
stalwart. He joined the KC staff after being demobbed from the
Royal Navy immediately after the Second World War, and worked
initially among the stacks of small wooden drawers which at
that time held the vast card index of the Registration Department,
long before the more convenient layout installed later in the
present building or the modern times of touch-type computerisation.
Quite soon, however, his organisational talents were recognised
and during his subsequent 30 year span with the Kennel Club
Lawrie became Crufts Show Manager; he was responsible for the
compilation and production of the Kennel Club publications (Kennel
Gazette, Year Book, Stud Book and Breed Records Supplement);
he organised the bulk of the considerable printing commitment
and the stationery - and much more, as they say.
Always ready to get involved when problems arose, Lawrie was
a tremendous right-hand man. Meticulous with his paperwork and
unfailing in his memory, he was astonishing in his uncanny ability
to retrieve an urgently needed letter from his files at the
drop of a hat. And one of his incidental but vital and largely
unknown commitments, again before computers came the Kennel
Club’s way, was the organisation of a small ‘cottage
industry’ of Enfield housewives who, in their homes, month
after month, painstakingly sorted the many thousands of flimsy
carbon copies of dog registrations, transfers, export pedigrees
and so on for despatch to the printers of the Breed Records
Supplement.
Lawrie retired in 1976, but shortly before that he was given
special dispensation by the KC General Committee to assist the
Ladies‘ Kennel Association, which was having great difficulty
in filling the post of Show Manager. It was a role he was persuaded
to continue for some fifteen years - until the 1990 LKA show
!
Both June and Lawrie were elected Honorary Members of the Kennel
Club on their retirement, and it gave me much pleasure when
they married in 1983 (Reg Bond having sadly died some years
earlier) and they lived happily together for the next twenty
years. I am sure that many will join me in sending deepest sympathy
to the families of both. They did a very great deal for the
world of dogs.
Lawrie’s funeral will be held on Monday,19th May at 11.0
am at Woking Crematorium.
Anyone wishing to send flowers or make a donation to charity
can send them to the funeral directors, Lodge Brothers, 104
Station Road, Addlestone, Surrey, Tel 01932829929.
Charity donations to Macmillan Cancer Relief, please.
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