Mrs Doris Lower.
A FORMER theatre sister and district nurse, Doris Lower, has died, aged 85.
Mrs Lower was born at Fareham on October 8, 1926, and moved to Portland, where her father worked as a naval nurse. While there, her brothers were born, David in 1934 and Ken in 1937, and she attended Weymouth Gram-mar School.
The family moved to the Island in 1938, and lived at Parkhurst, when her father became a prison officer. She went to Newport County Grammar School and, on leaving, worked briefly in the schools health department at the County Hall.
She then went to the West London Hospital to train as a state registered nurse, where she qualified in 1948. She worked in the London hospital as a staff nurse for six months before returning to the Island to help care for her father, who was now sick.
She became a theatre sister and was instrumental in setting up Rookwood ward at the now expanding St Mary’s Hospital.
After her marriage to Jim Purdy, at St Thomas’s Church, Newport, they lived in Buckbury Lane, where their only son, Howard, was born on Christmas day, 1960.
They moved to College Road, Newport, where her husband died in 1968, aged 38.
Mrs Lower then returned to work and became a district nurse in and around Newport and attached to both West Street and Pyle Street surgeries.
She remarried in 1972, to Bert Lower, who owned the pork butchers, with his brother, Horace, in Newport High Street, after which she moved into Bert and his son, Godfrey’s, home in St Johns Road.
Mrs Lower, of Landscape Lane, Newport, retired in 1991 but carried on helping many people in her line of work.
She was an active member of St Thomas’s Church for more than 60 years and enjoyed gardening and cooking. Bert died in1992 and she leaves her two brothers, son, daughter-in-law, Jane, and two grandchildren, Katy and Jim.
A funeral service will be held at the Minster Church of Sts Thomas on Monday, at 2pm.
• Donations for IW NHS trust charitable funds/diabetes centre can be sent to Geoff Leather, 45, Upper St James Street, Newport.
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