A MAN in his 70s has received some of the only known existing photographs of his late father after an appeal in The Standard.
John Redmond was contacted by his cousin Tony Key who saw the pictures in the paper, recognised them and contacted him to tell him about them.
It all began when we reported back in December how Sarah Coles-Connor had found some photographs of soldiers in the war in a vintage handbag she had bought from Dagfields Crafts and Antiques Centre in Cheshire. Along with the pictures, there was also a torn up tram ticket, a train ticket, a brass button and a newspaper clipping of a birth announcement.
The clipping read ‘Birth – On July 12th, at the Sandwell Nursing Home, West Bromwich, to Mr and Mrs D Key (nee Violet Hamer), 14, Church Square, Oldbury. The gift of a son’.
Sarah and her husband Mike were intrigued to find out more so a family friend helped them research the items they had discovered.
Through doing that, they found the son was Anthony Key who later married Anne E Brookes and the pair were both believed to be living in the Bromsgrove area.
It was then they contacted us and we printed the appeal in our paper.
Tony, who still lives in Bromsgrove, saw the article, recognised the pictures and got in touch with John.
There was a delay in the family contacting Sarah Coles-Connor because she had had to change her e-mail address.
When John’s son-in-law Simon Perry found her on Facebook, they contacted her and she journeyed down to Penkridge in Staffordshire where John now lives.
She gave him the photographs and other items and he paid her for the bag and gave her a bouquet of flowers to say thank you.
John said: “It was absolutely amazing – up until that point we only had one photograph of my dad and that was taken when he was serving in the army in 1941.
“Now we’ve got six – there was one bigger one and four little ones – the ones Sarah found were taken in the 1930s before I was born.
“It was so kind of Sarah and Mike to bring the items down,” he added.
Ironically, because John has family up in Cheshire, he and his wife Ann do go up there sometimes and have been to Dagfields Crafts and Antiques Centre in the past.
But it is not known how his mum’s bag came to be in the shop.
Sarah said it was great to be able to reunite John with the photographs.
“He told me he only had one picture of his father so to be able to give them these bonus ones that he didn’t even know existed was really nice,” she added.
