Olga Hanks 1923-2015

My grandmother Olga Florence Baudains was born in 1923 in Jersey.  Growing up on a farm with one brother, Rodney, of a similar age, the young Olga had what sounded like an idyllic childhood.  She wrote about ‘roaming the fields at will, climbing into the hayloft to play with newly-born kittens, feeding the hens and playing ball games in the yard’ although she did admit that as a child she envied her town cousins who had bathrooms and electric light, and couldn’t really understand why they thought life on the farm was so wonderful!

An excellent student, her school reports consistently praising her conscientiousness, Olga persuaded her parents to allow her to stay in school to take her school certificate when she was sixteen.  From a young age she’d admired the skill of the typists she glimpsed in offices and longed to join them, so secretarial college followed, before Olga achieved her ambition by excelling, in her teens and twenties, at a number of clerical posts, including one at Lloyds Bank.

In July 1940, when Olga was sixteen, German troops landed in the Channel Islands and took them over in occupation.  For the next five years the islanders were trapped under Nazi rule, enduring increasing hardship and poverty, draconian military laws and the threat of deportation to concentration camps for the smallest infraction.  Although the sheer number of occupying troops made resistance difficult, islanders expressed their hatred of the regime in small acts of defiance.  After radios were banned, they learnt how to make crystal sets and would listen covertly to the BBC for news of the war not filtered through the German propaganda machine.   One day a German search party came to Olga’s house before their illegal radio set could be hidden and Olga’s quick-thinking mother distracted the soldiers with a bustle of cleaning and hid the radio up her jumper!

After D-Day things became even worse for the island as even the Germans’ supply lines to Europe were cut, and islanders and occupiers alike were close to starvation.  When liberation finally came in 1945 the relief and joy was so great that even 50 years later the memory caused Olga to weep.

As they sat in church in September 1939, Olga’s lifelong best friend Marguerite whispered to her excitedly that a new young man was coming to preach.  Olga watched as Peter Hanks, a young Welsh Lay Pastor in his early 20s ascended the pulpit, then turned back to her friend. ‘I don’t think much of him’ Olga whispered.

But of course, as with so many love stories, from this unpromising beginning grew, first a friendship, then something more, and shortly before Olga turned 21, Peter proposed.  However, in those days trainee ministers were not permitted to be married, so the engagement was kept under wraps until at last in 1948 Olga and Peter’s wedding was finally able to take place in the family church in Jersey.  The pictures show Peter smiling broadly in his clerical collar and Olga looking very pretty in a parachute-silk wedding dress with flowers in her hair.

After a honeymoon in Chester, the couple moved to Stone, Staffordshire, Peter to his new church appointment and Olga to begin her life’s work as a minister’s wife.

Olga took her role very seriously, not only as devoted wife, but as right-hand woman and key source of support to the Minister and circuit.  Methodist ministers moved church, in general, every three years, and on arrival in every new appointment Olga would immediately set to her pastoral work, forming women’s groups, toddler groups and Sunday Schools, hosting meetings, tea parties and dinners, visiting the sick, new mothers, and grieving families.  She had an uncanny knack of finding common ground with anyone, an eye for who was feeling excluded and a way of drawing people out, of making them feel listened to and appreciated.

Ministry was as much a vocation to Olga as to her husband - her own words about her life as a minister’s wife were as follows.

‘I have opened fetes, cut anniversary cakes, scrubbed floors, painted schoolrooms and washed tea towels.  It has been a privilege.

But the greater privilege has been all the people I have met over the years.  I have offered transport to a convicted murderer one day and had lunch in the members’ dining room at the House of Commons on another.  I have lost count of the number of wedding receptions I have attended (always wearing the same hat!) and of all the funerals where I have wept with people in their sorrow.’

As well as her work, Olga’s family was hugely important to her.  She remained close to her brother Rodney and his wife Mabel, in Jersey, until their deaths very recently, and especially to their daughter Catherine who read the lesson today.  Emails and phone calls flew backwards and forwards between Jersey and Dorset at least once a week, with Olga and Rodney spending hours on the phone bickering good-naturedly as they did throughout their long lives as close siblings, while Catherine kept Olga up to date with all the gossip from the island that Olga still regarded in many ways as home.

Olga and Peter’s daughter Alison, my Mother, who was born in Shropshire in 1951, was a close companion throughout Olga’s life.  After they retired from the ministry Olga and Peter moved to Dorset to be closer to Alison, her husband Rod - also a Methodist minister, you can’t move for them in our family! - and to me, her one grandchild.  We were a close family, often spending time all together, going to the seaside or eating Sunday lunch.  We stuck together in tough times too, after her husband Peter died suddenly in 1987 Olga became even more a part of her daughter’s family, later enduring with us her son-in-law’s long illness.  Olga lived independently - with much appreciated support from her daughter - until late last year, when she moved to Wolfeton Manor Care Home in Charminster, quickly making friends among the residents and staff and enjoying her bay-windowed room with its view of the gardens and the hills beyond.

I always loved visiting my Gran; when I was small she would often have a jar of sweets for me to dip my hand into and was always game for joining in my schemes, from acting the grown-up parts in make-believe plays to helping me catch baby frogs in the long grass at the back of her garden.  As I got older she remained a big part of my life as we talked about everything from friends to faith, work, relationships, worries and challenges, often laughing hysterically over the scrapes we always seemed to get into.

Olga was spirited and cheeky with a keen sense of the ridiculous.  She was sharp minded with wide interests - she was a keen Scrabble player - and had a good memory for an anecdote.  Although she sometimes found going out difficult she was naturally sociable, always welcoming to old friends and always keen to make a new connection.  

On her 92nd birthday, which fell just a few weeks before she died, I was on a flight which was the first I’d been on with inflight wifi.  I knew Gran would appreciate the fun of an email from the air and as I got my laptop out to write to her it struck me how often I found myself thinking ‘I must tell Gran that’ when something interesting happened.  That day I told her about the concert I’d just done in Norway and of how I could see the clouds beneath me as I wrote from the cabin - ‘I know it’s unusual so I feel so lucky’ I signed off ‘that I have a grandmother who is also my friend’.