Renee Mavis Rhodes was a brave, determined and independent person who encouraged her family to be the same. During a short hospital admission in 2008, the patient notes at the foot of her bed stated clearly that she was “VERY independent!” 

Renee grew up as part of a loving and tight knit family of four with parents Winnie and Joe and younger sister Betty. Her independence was demonstrated early on in life when she absconded and took herself back home from Boston Spa, during the war, as a young evacuee, to the great consternation of her parents, who dutifully returned her the following day!

As a teenager at school, Renee became best friends with another girl called Kathleen Gawthorne, who went on to become her sister in law when Renee married Kathleen’s older brother Harold. As girls, Renee admired Kathleen because she was strong minded and a rebel! The two of them signed up to go to Europe together in 1948, chaperoning younger children on a  school trip that took them to Italy, Switzerland and included a journey on the Orient express. An experience she always hoped to reprise one day.

As a young adult, her first job was working at Bloom’s Chemists. She claimed that her responsibility for cleaning and dusting the shop window was good training for dealing with spiders ever after, and she was equally proud of her ability to be a steady pourer! Decanting medicines from bigger to smaller bottles having also been a useful skill she picked up whilst working there!

Renee married Harold Gawthorne in 1951. At the start of their marriage they lived in the Wykebecks where first two daughters Gillian and Judy were born and they lived in the flat above her father Joe initially, then later on in the station houses at Garforth, and then Thorner. Renee and Harold’s third daughter, Elizabeth, was born at the station house in Thorner. Renee recounted how Harold came home from an evening out with the Gawthorne relatives on the night Elizabeth was born and how she made them all sandwiches for supper before going into labour just a couple of hours later!

The family subsequently moved to Seacroft where Rosemary was born. Renee returned to work at the GPO, which later became BT, until she retired in 1990. Latterly her work involved radiopagers, often supporting hospital doctors with their pagers. During her recent hospital stay she was still chatting to her doctors about maintenance of their pagers!

In 1977 after Gillian moved to Sweden, Renee began learning Swedish at evening classes at Leeds Polytechnic along with Rosemary and continued with this for a further 6 years, becoming a fairly competent speaker for the remainder of her life.

After retiring, Renee enjoyed 10 years at home with Harold until he died in 2000 just 3 months short of their golden wedding anniversary.

Renee was always interested in other languages and cultures and she loved to travel. Her motto was always “it’s all an adventure!” and in this vein she planned a short visit to Paris with Gillian in the early 1970s, and after Gillian moved to Sweden, she made regular trips to visit, especially after her first two granddaughters, Louise and Jennifer were born there in the early 1980s. Renee kept in touch with son in law, Karthen’s family and continued to visit them in Sweden long after Gillian moved back to England. 

Other foreign travels included many holidays in Spain with Harold , visits to New York, Boston, Miami and the Florida Keys with family members, a rail tour of Ontario and Quebec with Rosemary and a trip to Australia to visit in-laws Tom & Dorothy, stopping over in Japan to visit Louise on her way home. She made this last trip entirely on her own, independent as ever.

After Harold’s death, Judy came to live with her mother and whilst their relationship could be fractious at times because they were both strong minded women, they also had a strong bond and as they both battled with cancer, they each felt that they were the carer for the other one. Renee was devastated by the loss of her second daughter in 2013.

In happier times though she loved the burgeoning cosmopolitan family and loved big family get togethers, especially for holidays in Italy, Portugal and France (she celebrated her 80th birthday in Paris) or Centre Parcs in Cumbria.

She loved modern technology, especially using the iPad Louise and Luca bought her for Christmas one year, to keep in touch with all of the extended family through video calling. She took to Facebook easily, enjoying watching the development of all her nieces’ and nephews’ families as well as her own and in June 2016 she posted on Facebook, 

 “My family is English,Swedish,Scottish,Italian German, Dutch and Irish. We are the EU in miniature and I am very proud of that.”

Renee regularly travelled to Scotland to visit Rosemary and Elizabeth and her grandchildren in Aberdeen, Sofie and Kristian. She loved it last year when granddaughter Sofie came to stay for an extended period. She also really enjoyed  granddaughter Jennifer’s wedding in Glasgow some years ago. 

More recently, her 7 great grandchildren were the apples of her eye and she revelled in spending time with them all, only meeting the youngest 2 in her very last days over Christmas.

She had been actively planning her 90th birthday celebrations for next May with granddaughter Louise and was looking forward to that family gathering immensely. Renee had a young outlook, despite her years. She outlived all her contemporaries and was often sad about that but she did enjoy the company of younger friends and family and was very happy using modern technology to help her do that, when she no longer had the strength to travel independently. She was hugely proud of the fact that she had managed to continue living at home, independently, right up until the end of her life. She enjoyed her role as family matriarch and was very keen for the youngest family members to remember her, as she remembered happy times with older relatives from her own childhood. She will be deeply missed by all the family.