Barbara Eveline Hood Tyman 11 July 1938 – 30 November 2023
by Robert and Philip Tyman
As a friend wrote soon after she passed away, everyone in Sheen seemed to know Barbara either through the health centre, All Saints Church, or from the school gate. As someone else mentioned, she couldn’t think of a time when Mum wasn’t helping someone.
Mum, Granny, Barbara, Aunty Barby, Hoody (to her school friends), Friend, Neighbour, Nurse, Lover of Birthdays, Rememberer of Birthdays, Organiser, Helper. These are some of the many ways of describing Barbara and her relationship to others.
At times during our childhood she could be highly embarrassing. If we were being driven somewhere by Mum and she caught sight of someone trying to cross the road with a child in a silly or dangerous place, we knew we had to brace ourselves. As we slid slowly down in our seats, Mum would wind down the window and call out,
“There’s a pedestrian crossing just over there!!”
In a funny way this story encapsulates Mum. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and perhaps every now and then she could express her views in a clumsy way, but at the same time it shows that she cared about others. She cared about those people crossing the road in the wrong place and was concerned that there might be an accident.
Speaking of accidents, Mum’s nursing expertise was often called upon in the neighbourhood. She was always ready to help in an emergency. Mum was the go-to person at the top of the road for anyone with a lump, bump, cut or bruise. She also taught basic first aid skills to cubs, scouts and brownies.
Many people will have come across Mum at Sheen Lane Health Centre where she worked for many years as a nurse. After attending Wimbledon High School, Mum qualified in the late 1950s at Victoria Hospital in Tite St, Chelsea (part of St George’s). She took a year out from nursing in the mid-60s and headed off to America to spend a year as a nanny with a family in Pennsylvania. She made close friendships there that lasted a lifetime. Mum really was exceptionally good at keeping in touch with people. During that year, she also discovered the food that she probably couldn’t stand more than anything else, peanut butter.
Something she liked a lot more on her toast was marmalade. As a good friend said, “She was the Queen of Marmalade”. She loved giving presents of a jar of the gold stuff and selling it to raise funds for All Saints. She was also a Christmas cake supremo and a bramble and damson jelly expert.
Mum was a helpful, reliable and supportive neighbour, someone who was generous with her time whether it was feeding cats, looking after children, shopping for older neighbours or organizing Top of Palewell Park pub lunches. She was always ready for a good laugh and a chat and was a true friend, through good times and bad, in over 50 years of living in Sheen.
Mum loved a party, particularly if organized by herself. She was pretty good at it. Many may remember Mum holding her 60th birthday in the Church Hall, no doubt at competitive booking rates given by the then Church Hall manager, one Mrs. B Tyman.
Mum was of course the Stalwart of the Church Hall over many, many years. She was also a cornerstone of the annual All Saints lunch. She would also enlist non church goers to help in preparing industrial quantities of Coronation Chicken every November.
In later years Mum was very active with FISH and Active Retired, continuing to help many people. As a neighbour wrote, “She was our special Palewell district nurse, ready to come round after a distressed phone call to comfort a sick child, remove a splinter or bandage a wound. She made you instantly feel better with her cheerful and professional confidence. She was the kind of person who made you feel lucky to live in this community.”
Mum had an amazing ability to remember the birthdays of just about everyone she knew. She was as good as Facebook is now. Early January every year, she would write all the birthdays for the year ahead in her weekly planner. She would also put down the year of birth so that she would know if it was a round number. Mum loved her own birthday and being on July 11 it was often a great time of year for a party. As she said herself, the sun always shines on July 11.
The last 2 years of Mum’s life were at Lynde House. All the staff there made it as comfortable and as good a life as it could be. As one of Mum’s friends so beautifully put it,
“The most recent memories are of fragility and decline but two short years are a tiny fraction of a life lived to the full, with energy and commitment, and lots of laughter.”