Hilary Hughes Connell

Hilary Hughes Connell (nee Findlay) was born on June 9th, 1943, in London, England. Her loving parents were Edith Ivy (better known as Pat) and Alexander (Alec) Findlay. Hilary was born during the height of World War II and didn't meet her big brother, Peter Alexander Robert Findlay (a war evacuee in Canada), until after the war had finally ended.

Hilary is survived by many loving family members. Her adult children, Rhiannon Hughes, Glyn Hughes; grandchildren, Emma McKeganey-Hughes and Ben McKeganey-Hughes; nieces, Janet Elie, Terry Findlay, and Gillian Whitney; great-niece, Alexandra Findlay; and great-nephews, Eden Myles, Aram Reed, Joshua Whitney, and David Whitney. Hilary sadly leaves behind her partner in life and love, Roger Pryor, and their beloved long-haired dachshund, Maggie.

Hilary wrote “her story” and we share that here…

“I was born on June the 9th, 1943 in the northern suburbs of London, England. About a mile from my home was the subway, which at that point was overground as it was near the end of the line. About ten miles away was the main London to Scotland railway line where the wonderful old steam trains ran, most famously the Coronation Scot. However, from the air it was hard for the aircraft navigators to distinguish between the two lines. As they dropped their bombs, the German aircraft didn’t know which railway line they were aiming for but fortunately they missed both lines. However, those bombs still fell and many houses were hit and demolished, often with fatalities when people were still in their home.

None of the bombs landed on our house but some fell dangerously close. When I was about a year old, one such bomb made such a loud noise when it was coming in to land that I was so terrified I sank my teeth into the carved wooden legs of our oak dining table. The cut marks remained there throughout my childhood.

My mother was particularly protective of me as my parents had sent my brother, Peter, to Canada as part of the evacuation program if people had families for these evacuees. My father had uncles in Regina and Winnipeg so my ten-year-old brother was welcomed into the Regina family home for the war years. As the war progressed, and the German army marched further into France, my parents had no idea whether they would ever see their son again. And it was because they missed Peter that they decided to have another child – me.

My brother had been sent to Canada on the SS Hilary. The ship took three weeks to make the crossing as it zig zagged across the Atlantic to avoid the German submarines. His ship was the second to provide passage to British evacuees. The third ship was sunk with the loss of life of 2,000 children, so the evacuation program was then cancelled.

When I was born my parents decided that my brother’s ship had obviously been a lucky ship so that is why they named me Hilary, after his ship. My brother Peter was a 14 year old schoolboy living in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada when I was born. I don’t remember too much about Peter being my brother when I was a little girl, except when he was coming to visit he always gave the same whistle as he came down the road near our house. However, a number of years later, our relationship was exceptionally close, as he became my white knight.

I grew up in the back garden of 127 Lonsdale Drive in Oakwood, London. I didn’t know there was a bigger world out there until I was five years old, and I didn’t like it.

I felt safe and secure, I was happy, I had untold number of ‘friends’ in my back garden. Sadly as I got older and was exposed to the bigger world, I lost touch with them. Today I realize they were my guardian angels and today I am hoping to reconnect with them” (Comment from her daughter: Mum wrote this at least 6-7 years ago. I know Mum did reconnect with the angels and could often see them flying near as either silver or gold in colour – she was a very spiritual lady, so I am not surprised she could always see angels and they were near her, as I am sure they are now with such a beautiful new one amongst them).

Hilary continues…

“My mother used to smile as she listened to me talking to all my ‘friends’. Probably one of the happiest times of my life.

I enjoyed a happy childhood and travelled all over England, Wales and part of Scotland when Dad took Mum and me on some of his business trips. I developed a deep love for my homeland in those years of the late 1940s and early 1950s, which I will forever hold dear to my heart.

I remember the post war years of rationing and being intrigued with the coupons. One day my mother got word from a neighbor that bananas were in the greengrocer’s store. She quickly put coats on us both, put me in the pushchair, and rushed to the store. I remember her coat flying open and I said, somewhat awestruck that this should happen – “Oh mummy, you’ve still got your apron on.” That’s how special bananas were to her - rush to the store and hope they were still available. That was my introduction to that strange yellow fruit.

We had a beautiful garden as mother had a real green thumb. I remember all kinds of fruit, and an apple tree. Flowers filled the beds around the lawn. There was a swing – who built it? It was either Peter or Dad. I think it was probably Peter. I was given a lovely china tea set from Canada and to make sure to keep it safe I buried it under the apple tree.

When I was five-years-old mother took me on the bus to a house where the lady had a nursery class. Mother took me in where there were other children playing and then she left. I could not stop crying. How could she leave me? I don’t think she took me again.

Next came elementary school, Merryhills, and I loved that, even though a couple of times I didn’t want to go to school and Dad had to take me in the car. I remember digging an Empire Garden, and playing the recorder. So many memories.

A special time for me was exploring London with my Dad on Sundays, following a trail of unusual City sights in my Daily Mail I-Spy London book. We found dozens of unusual clocks and statues down little backwater lanes. Then we would enjoy a picnic lunch sitting on a bench alongside the River Thames; it was restful with all the businesses closed for the day and I loved that peaceful silence and stillness.

My teen years coincided with the explosion of Rock and Roll – Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and Tommy Steele. I loved this music, and sat for hours in the local coffee bar listening to the juke box. I then discovered jazz.

I visited Peter in Canada with our mother when I was 18, and we had a wonderful trip, but Peter and I didn’t really build a relationship until I was married with two young children, and it was when I moved to Florida that we really became close, the 14 years difference in our ages vanished.

I went from being a very quiet and shy little girl to a jazz loving hippy. Wild and fun years. I headed off to Paris, France as an au pair – it was all part of life in the early 1960s – and stayed there for six months, although only one week as an au pair. I was a slave and left to work for the American Express in their US army payroll office instead.

I was 21 years old when I married David Hughes and soon followed two children, Rhiannon in November 1964 and Glyn Alexander John in October 1965. We were living in Crawley, Sussex. I started freelance reporting for the local weekly newspaper doing a women’s club news column, and then joined the newspaper as Chief Reporter when the children started school.

David was now working as a journalist in one of England’s top daily newspapers, the Daily Mail. In 1974 he heard that a newspaper in Florida, USA was hiring British journalists. On August 14th we all flew out to Lantana, Florida for our new life. It was wonderful. I felt so at home here. In 1980 David returned to England and Glyn returned with him. Rhiannon stayed to graduate high school and then she returned to England. In 1988 I married Dan Connell and changed careers to join the commercial real estate industry, working for 10 years helping to build and manage a high end business park west of Fort Lauderdale. In 1998 Dan took a job transfer within his company to Charlotte, North Carolina. He had recurring cancer and in July 2001 Dan passed away.

At that time, Glyn was married to Clare and working for I.A.T.A., a job that took him to Montreal where he and his family lived for five years. Rhiannon was deputy principal of a high school on Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of France. I went to visit Rhiannon for a three week vacation and stayed four and a half years, some of that time in Gravesend, Kent in England when Rhiannon took the position of principal of a high school in that town. I got a job on Guernsey as a legal secretary and once a month flew to England to spend the weekend with my mother who was in a nursing home in Woking, Surrey. This was a very rewarding period of my life – I was reconnecting with my mother and we developed a wonderful relationship, which we both enjoyed up until she passed away in July 2004. Rhiannon and I were living just ten minutes’ drive from each other and we developed a wonderful new relationship that included motorbike trips together (Rhiannon had a Suzuki Bandit 1200), bicycle rides, spiritual healing and alternative therapies, softball again and fun relaxing times.

Glyn by now had been promoted again, this time as a Director of I.A.T.A. which meant a move to head office in Geneva, Switzerland where he and his family have lived since 2004. His two children, Emma who is 22 and Ben who is 20, attended an international school opposite the United Nations building so they had an exposure to a multi-cultural environment, which they loved and prepared them well for their university studies. Emma is a graduate fashion photographer in the fashion industry, working in such places as Barcelona and Berlin; Ben is currently studying economics and politics at Warwick University, England and will go on to do his Master’s at London School of Economics in the future.

When living with Rhiannon in England, and working on Rhiannon’s high school campus as part of the schools’ network group, the English winter came and I was reminded of why I had enjoyed Florida so much, so when my former boss, Paul, who had since started his own business, offered me a job back in Florida, I jumped at the opportunity and returned to Fort Lauderdale in 2005. I loved my job as property manager for a 94,000 square foot office building but in July 2009 I decided it was time to retire. I celebrated this event with a five week trip to England to stay with Rhiannon and her then partner Jacqui, a trip that included ten days in Italy along with Jacqui’s mother Eileen, and a long weekend in Geneva with Glyn and his family.

Life then opened up for me. I met a wonderful man, Roger Pryor, and life took on a whole new dimension. For his birthday in 2008 I took us for a long weekend to his favorite hotel in the Florida Keys. I commented how wonderful it would be to do this more often but it would be too expensive. Roger recalled all the years of camping in the Keys with his two daughters when they were growing up. I made the momentous statement, “I’ve never been camping.” Two weeks later Roger had bought a pop up camper, which we towed to our first Florida state park camping trip. I loved it! I was up at the crack of dawn walking Roger’s dog through the woods and alongside the creeks and loving every minute of being right there in the great outdoors.

After our third camping trip Roger decided we needed to upgrade our camper as it was taking an hour to set up the pop up camper and he was thinking of the rainy, mosquito days ahead. We then became proud owners of a 32 foot motor home and every month we went away for a week to a different Florida state park. At first we used to trailer Roger’s motor bike to give us transport at the camp grounds, then we bought a Smart car for a little bit more comfort. Life was good! We sometimes would kayak or go out and fish on his boat too.”

Mum’s story by her hand finished there, so her daughter, Rhiannon continues…

Mum loved being a part of the Unity Church and developed many friends through the warm community and was an active part of the Uni-Tea women’s group and eagerly assisted in the organisation of the annual women’s retreat even after the time she was unable to actually participate in the away trip weekend.

Mum still loved to visit England and enjoyed more mother-daughter holiday times together and spending time with her son, Glyn too, either on the Europe side of the Pond or more, on the USA side when Glyn flew in for annual conferences in Florida or nearby States. Her last trip to the UK was in 2014, where she even joined Jacqui and me for one of our ballroom dancing evenings out. This was the last really mobile time she had unassisted without a wheelchair, because it was following that trip that her physical challenges linked with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) began to take hold. She never liked to label her challenges or link them to MS as part of her defiant, commendable efforts to ever strive to be the mobile free spirit she always loved to be.

I want to recognize the courage, strength and resilience of the most amazing woman I know, who I was so fortunate to say, was also my Mum. When you saw her, her face would light up and the most beaming smile and welcoming warm eyes would greet you. She always made you feel special and loved, whether you were her partner Roger, her family or her friends. We were so blessed to have such a wonderful lady in our lives, although it was for far too short a time. Her Mum and her grand-mother (Old Nanny) both lived into their 90’s so we thought we would have so much precious and cherished time together. Oh how much more fun we could have filled in those extra 20 years together had her body given her the freedom to do so. She was my rock, and I shall miss her inspirational spirit, her moral guidance, her helping hand, her spiritual healing and always her unconditional love. I am glad I chose my Mum and it is because of her that I want to be the best person I can be in this world, and I am not afraid now for what is next because the person who made me feel so safe and loved in this world will be there for me always whilst I am here and when I meet her for the next part of our journey together.

Instead of sending flowers, the Hughes family asks that you please make a memorial donation to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. MS was a health challenge that Hilary bravely fought against for many years. Click the link below to make a donation in her memory.