Умер Чарли Леннон, дядя Джона

Первая моя реакция на этот тред, было недоумение: кому какое дело до дядушки погибшего в 1980 году Джона. И, как всегда, был неправ в своих автоматизмах: очень трогательная статья о человеке, бывшем близко от легенды, как-бы затронутым этой легендой и оставшимся не у дел.
Хороший, добрый человек, приятно узнать о том, что он был. Жаль, что больше его нет.
Спасибо ДМ за отсыл.

Вот, кстати, еще одна статья о нем, хорошо дополняющая первую.
http://members.aol.com/scottwheeler00/charlie.htm

Я думаю стоит привести весь текст статей,для истории.
Death of Lennon's favourite uncle May 27 2002

By Claire Tolley Daily Post Staff


CHARLIE Lennon, the oldest relative of Beatles legend John, died in the early hours of yesterday morning aged 83.

He was widely seen as John's favourite uncle and is credited with healing a longstanding rift between the ex-Beatle and his father.

Mr Lennon spent many hours greeting tourists making the Beatles pilgrimage to Liverpool with a joke and a smile.

But his cheery disposition masked the fact that while his nephew's estate was worth hundreds of millions of pounds, he subsisted on his weekly pension.

Until he was admitted to the hospital 12 days ago as his health failed, home was a threadbare bedsit in Sefton Park.

In public he told his story on the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour and was conspicuous at Beatles conventions.

After he was knocked down in a car accident in 1990, thousands of fans across the world sent get-well cards, along with famous friends such as the McCartneys.

But he lived a solitary life, his flat's walls a mini-shrine to his nephew and the Beatles, made emptier after the death of his muchloved cat, Aigburth.

While some commentators saw him as exploited by the Beatles phenomenon, when he was interviewed in 1994, he said: "But at least when I go, I'll owe no-one anything."

Staff at the Royal Liverpool Hospital described him as poorly but comfortable at the beginning of the weekend but his condition deteriorated.

His next-door neighbour, Karen Waldeis, from his home close to the Iron Bridge in Sefton Park is arranging a date for the funeral.

She is planning a ceremony paying tribute to Mr Lennon's love of the Fab Four.

If none of Mr Lennon's distant relatives come forward - he never married or had children - she believes he would have liked his ashes scattered on the river from the Mersey ferry.

Last night, she said: "I want all the Beatles records playing. If I'm going to organise it I'm going to do it as I think he would have wanted.

Ms Waldeis, who is a carer for the elderly, added: "The nurses on the ward were wonderful, they treated him as if he was their own father.

He was a lovely little feller, really friendly and totally independent.

"Whenever there was a Beatles convention on he would get all these people coming to pick him up to take him there and he would talk to all the visitors. It used to make his life a little more exciting as he got older.

"And he adored his cat. His first cat, Aigburth, lived for years and years and he doted on it. When it died we buried it in the garden and put up a little plaque.

"Then his friend gave him another, Aigburth II. Mr Lennon loved that cat more than life itself. It used to cheer him up when I went to see him in hospital and told him how the cat was sitting in his chair and in the window.

"It was his life. He used to talk to the cat as if it was another human being. I'm looking for someone to give him a home because he would be distraught if he thought the cat had to go to the RSPCA."

Mr Lennon, was the youngest brother of John's father, Freddie and was often invited to spend weekends at John's home in Weybridge, Surrey.

After the deaths of Freddie and John, Mr Lennon, who had travelled the country working as a chef, retired from his job at a Brighton hotel.

He returned to his native Liverpool at the age of 62, moving into his modest flat in Sefton Park.

A composer himself, he was proud of his nephew's historic achievements.

In later years he was often to be found at the Mathew Street Festival, leading hordes of tourists on their annual pilgrimage around the haunts of the Fab Four...SUPL:

Это вторая статья, точнее ее первая часть
John Lennon's
Uncle Charlie
Travels with Charlie

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by Scott Wheeler




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It was a Saturday morning in Liverpool in 1945. Four-year-old John Lennon stood in Penny Lane, gazing longingly at the toys in a sweetshop window while he and his Uncle Charlie, home on furlough from wartime service, waited for John's mother to return from an errand in a nearby fish shop.

"We're lookin' in the window, and John's pointin' at this tin bus in the window," recalls Charlie, now a robust 79. "I said to him, 'You want that?' So we go in and I buy it for him, don't I? I asked, 'How much for the bus?' They said, "Well, the bus is two pounds fifty, and the Donald Duck...' I said, 'What Donald Duck?' They said, 'The one he's walking out with.' John was walking out the door with a Donald Duck on wheels, pulling it with a piece of string. Mind you, he'd broken it before he got home!

"When I was invited to John's home [in 1967], his dad said to me, 'What are you going to say to John when you see him? You haven't seen him since the Newcastle Road days.' I said, 'I'll ask him for me bus back!" He'd still got the bus-it was up in the music room when I last saw it."

Today, more than half a century since that visit to the Penny Lane sweetshop, most of Charlie Lennon's family has died or moved away from Liverpool, but Charlie is far from lonely. Thanks to his famous nephew's legacy and his own winning personality, Charlie has become a kind of "uncle to the world," holding a unique place of honor in the hearts of thousands of Beatle fans who have been lucky enough to come to know him through his radio appearances on BBC Radio Merseyside, his spots as guest singer with the Scott Wheeler Band during the band's twice-yearly visits to Liverpool, and his visits to Liverpool's annual Beatle Week festival.

With his trusty John Lennon cap, Beatle badges, and unmistakable Lennon profile, Charlie is a familiar sight strolling on the streets of Liverpool. Sometimes he hops aboard Cavern City Tours' famous Magical Mystery Tour bus for a lift into the city centre and a chance to greet a "captive audience" of surprised, delighted passengers. Among his most devoted friends is CCT tour guide Eddie "The Walrus" Porter, who regularly visits Charlie at his home and frequently takes him "out on the town." Wherever he goes, Charlie is routinely greeted by fans and besieged for autographs. True to the Lennon tradition, he is a true charmer with a kind word for every friend and fan-along with generous doses of the mischievous Lennon wit.

Although it's been more than 30 years since Charlie last saw John, his thoughts are never far from his murdered nephew, whether awake or asleep-as he discovered anew back in 1990 while recovering in hospital from multiple injuries after being struck by a speeding bus while crossing the street. According to Charlie, while he lingered in a coma for several days and the hospital staff struggled to revive him, he had an unexpected face-to-face meeting with John somewhere beyond the pale.

"I was arguing with our John, as usual," Charlie recalled. "I think that's what brought me 'round, arguing with bloody John Lennon. He said, 'What the bloody hell are you doin' up here?' He was disgusted. I told him, 'Well, John, I've only just come to see you.' His idea was that I had no right to be there. There was a concert on at the Pier Head, and that was where I was supposed to be...representing him, as usual."

Charlie was born in November 1918, the youngest of three sons. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and did anti-aircraft duty during the Battle Of Britain. After the war he embarked on a long career as a chef and caterer, and worked aboard many of the ships plying the River Mersey. He was also a devoted son and brother on the home front, taking primary care for his mother and his brother during their final illnesses.

Charlie is fiercely proud of his family's legacy. He was close to his brother Alfred, John's estranged father-whom he never refers to as Freddie, as many others have-and he takes particular pride in the crucial role he played in John's first episode of reconciliation with his father, in 1967.

Продолжение
"It was me that pushed it all the way," Charlie said. "That was caused by his father ringing me up and saying that he'd been up to John's house and John had slammed the door in his face."

As Alfred's widow, Pauline Lennon, explains in her book, Daddy Come Home (Angus & Robertson, London, 1990), Charlie wrote John an outspoken letter in which he told John pointedly that Alfred was not solely responsible for the end of his marriage to Julia, and that John should make contact with Alfred for his side of the story before deciding who was to blame for the breakup of his family.

"I didn't tell John's father I was going to write to him," Charlie said. "Didn't mention a bleedin' word. I said, 'Well, here goes.' I wrote twenty-odd pages. I let go on John, letting him know the real truth. That letter reunited them."

In 1967, John welcomed his uncle to Kenwood, John's sumptuous, Tudor-style mansion in Weybridge, for a visit. It was the first time they had seen each other since John was a small child. Charlie recalls the visit fondly but says it was uneventful: "We had a drink and shared a bag of crisps."

Charlie retired in 1982 after nearly 40 years in the catering business. For awhile he lived the quiet life of a pensioner, but it wasn't long before the long arm of Beatles history reached out and drew him into the limelight. By the end of the decade Charlie was a regular VIP guest at Cavern City Tours' annual MerseyBeatle Festival (now the Beatle Week festival), where he presided at the opening and closing of each convention at the Adelphi Hotel and gave interviews and autographs to fans of John's from all over the globe.

In August 1991, at the invitation of Liverpool author and radio personality Spencer Leigh, Charlie made a guest appearance on Spencer's On The Beat show and gave his first public performance of his first original composition, a spirited sea chantey titled "The Ships Of The Mersey."

Among the other guests on that show was Boston musician Scott Wheeler, who had struck up a friendship with Charlie at the 1989 MerseyBeatle Festival and visited him at his home in Liverpool every summer.

In August 1994, when Scott and his friend and performing partner Dennis Roach came to Liverpool to participate in the 1994 MerseyBeatle Festival, they invited Charlie to perform his song live with them at Labinskys, in Temple Court, Liverpool, during the Mathew Street Music Festival. Both Charlie and the song were an instant hit. Right on the spot he became a charter member of the band, a position he holds to this day.

During the Scott Wheeler Band's 1995 Merseyside Summer Tour, Charlie and Scott returned to the BBC Radio Merseyside studios in Liverpool, accompanied this time by Dennis, and the three of them had the honor of performing "The Ships Of The Mersey" live on Spencer Leigh's show, with drummer Steve Holly, a veteran of Paul McCartney's band Wings, providing percussion and the Beatles' friend and mentor Astrid Kirchherr among those in the studio audience. Two days later the band gave a scheduled concert in the atrium of the Cavern Walks centre in Mathew Street, and Charlie performed the song again, with full band accompaniment, before an enthusiastic live audience several hundred strong.

Charlie continues to make guest singing appearances with the Scott Wheeler Band on the band's winter and summer visits to Liverpool, and performs occasionally with other bands during the rest of the year. He also gives interviews to reporters from various newspapers and radio and TV stations. In 1994 he was the subject of a two-page profile in the Liverpool Echo.

In April 1996 Charlie was proud and grateful to cross the Atlantic to Boston, USA to appear as a VIP guest at Moptop Productions' Beatles Bash '96 convention. Among the other invited to appear were the Pete Best Band, former Beatles assistants Alistair Taylor and Alf Bicknell, Eddie Porter, and the Scott Wheeler Band.

On the day before the convention, the promoters contacted the hotel hosting the convention and apruptly canceled the event, leaving thousands of ticketholders disappointed and throwing the guests and merchants' plans into a state of confusion. In response, a group of the convention's scheduled participants, led by Bicknell, decided to jump into the breach and stage their own scaled-down Beatles bash at an alternate venue in suburban Boston. The scaled-down event was a success, and Charlie was in fine form throughout the proceedings despite the frustration and disappointment.

"We were so very proud, coming here," Charlie told the crowd during one of his afternoon interviews. "We were so disheartened at the beginning, when we got the news that nothing was happening and no money was being paid out to those of us who had signed contracts. But we were determined that nobody was going to jump on our backs and keep us from doing what we all love."

A few days later, with the turmoil of the convention behind them, Scott took Charlie, Eddie and Alistair Taylor to the Bull and Finch pub in Boston-popularly known as "the Cheers bar" because of the internationally popular TV show-for another round of photos and autographs and a taste of Boston-brewed beer. The also took a tour of the area's Revolutionary War sites before heading back to the airport for the flight home to England. First they went to Lexington, where they marched along the line of the Redcoats' advance across the Battle Green and paid their respects at the grave of the fallen Minutemen. Next, they drove down the Battle Road for a visit to Concord Bridge, where the British had been driven back by the colonists.

At the close of their visit, just as Charlie stepped off the bridge, a young man walked up to him, extended his hand, and said "You're John Lennon's uncle, aren't you?" Charlie was astonished and delighted to find that his face had become familiar all the way from the River Mersey to Concord Bridge. "I can't go anywhere any more!" he said.

After a hard day of traveling, visiting, and perhaps a bit of entertaining in the Lennon tradition, Charlie is glad to return home to his kitten, Aigburth, and his ever-increasing collection of Beatle books and souvenirs, in the flat they share in Sefton Park, a few miles south of Liverpool city centre. There was another Aigburth before this one: a calico cat whom he took in after she was abandoned by another tenant in his building. Charlie took the starving cat into his home and nursed her back to health, and she lived the life of a queen under Charlie's care until her death in 1995 at the remarkable age of 27.