Irene lost her mother at an early stage. Her father brought up Irene along with her two sisters and their older brother in an affluent home. Her younger brother John was an infant in arms when his mother died and he lived with a relative for some years. Irene's life was one of contrasts. She and her siblings must have greatly missed their mother's love but materially they wanted nothing. Growing up in the era of the Great War was an austere business even for those who could afford an open top Bentley to take them on weekend jaunts to the moors around Plymouth where they lived.
Some of that experience put steel into one of the most beautiful and kindest characters one ever had the pleasure to have known. Irene was charming, elegant, always well dressed, even when rationing made most women appear dowdy. She was single minded and tough but in a mannered and measured way that always left an opponent feeling they had been cuddled rather than beaten. Married in 1939 her early years with Leon saw them move around the country with his career at the Legal and General Assurance Company. They lived in Southsea during some of the most savage bombing of nearby Portsmouth that took place in the Second World War and survived the stronger.
Moving to St Agnes in Cornwall in the fifties Irene soon became a stalwart in WI. Like everything she did her contributions were understated and done modestly with a grace that has all but been lost today. She had innate and artistic skills that were never really developed and, has she been born a generation later, might have had an altogether different path in life. That those she left behind are grateful that her actual path was as it was is beyond doubt. There seems to be no one alive who ever heard a bad word said about Irene or come to that, ever heard her say a really bad word about anyone else. That was why she was who she was.
Irene was a much-loved person by her family and many friends. Jack Russell, son in law