Dave Wadlow Obituary
Dave was born in Pinner on Boxing Day 1936 to Alec and Violet Wadlow. He was the youngest of 3 brothers and attended Primary School and then Headstone Secondary Modern in Pinner followed by an apprenticeship.
After working with father at EMI Hayes, he became a teacher in the mid-1960s moving into his home in the Woodlands where he lived for the rest of his life. He then became a lecturer in woodwork at Greenhill College Harrow in the 1970s and exemplifying his character, took the trouble to learn sign language so he could teach deaf students, taking early retirement in the early 1990s.
He met his long-time partner Ann at Greenhill, and although they never married and kept separate properties, they had been together right to the end, finally at Rayners Care Home in Hyde Heath, where Dave died aged 89 on Monday 27th April as result of kidney failure.
Dave was a member of Chesham Bois Lawn Tennis & Squash Club for well over 30 years but his introduction to the game was truly typical. Two of his friends asked if he would like to try a game of tennis but told him that he would need to be appropriately attired. Some old white T-shirt and shorts were just about ok, but the shoes were more of a challenge. Dave’s solution was a pair of brown suede hush puppies and a can of white spray paint, then off he went to a charity shop and bought a battered old wooden racquet. The sight must have been rather bizarre as was the fact that he won!
As anyone who had the pleasure of playing with him will tell you, Dave was an accomplished and wily player, as the author of this piece discovered when playing him for the over 60s singles title over a number of years. We even named the trophy the Henry/Wadlow cup to commemorate this ongoing battle. His willingness to help-out was demonstrated when he often found himself drafted in at the last minute to play in matches to make up the team and many a surprised opponent was outwitted by his craft.
Dave had many talents including all aspects of DIY and he was an accomplished cook, a talent that he brought to the club by providing Wednesday suppers for club players for a period of some 25 years for a charge that together with the mayhem of round the table table-tennis made them very popular occasions.
Dave never learned to drive a car but was a familiar sight arriving at the club either on his motorbike, with its custom-made wooden box, or his bicycle with bags of groceries hanging from the handlebars.
Collector or Hoarder, the choice of words is yours but if you ever had the chance to visit his house, I suspect you might tend to the latter! Dave was a lover of Charity Shops, collecting paintings, he was an accomplished amateur artist, books and tennis racquets. If he saw a racquet, he felt compelled to rescue it and ended up with a collection over 300!
Dave was a real character and this is exemplified by his love for cats irrespective of who owned them, to the extent that he had even taken out a pane of glass from his bedroom window and installed a plank leading from the sloping roof so that Monte, the next doors’ cat, could visit him at any time.
Peter Henry