A much-loved woman who helped many children learn to read has died seven months after her 100th birthday.
Beryl Sims celebrated her centenary last November, with a visit from friends and children from St Nicholas Primary School at Hurst, where she had heard children read.
A former pupil said: “It was always a special day when Mrs Sims came. We all hoped it would be our turn to read to her.”
At the birthday gathering current Year 6 pupils gave her a card and sang Happy Birthday. Hurst Parish Council chairman Wayne Smith gave her a birthday cake and flowers from the village.
In December, Mrs Sims switched on the village’s Christmas lights at their St Nicholas night celebrations.
Mrs Sims told Wokingham Today with clarity and wit about her busy life.
Asked about being 100, she joked: “I feel the same as I did a week ago.”
She added: “I’ve got nothing really bad wrong with me at all. I’m quite lucky really except I can’t see properly. I miss reading but I listen to the radio and television. And I can get around with my stick.”
She had worked with the NSPCC children’s charity in London as the financial director’s secretary. “It was a good job, a jolly nice one. I had my own little desk and typewriter. I took letters from him [the director] and did the book keeping for the NSPCC,” she said.
She recalled a daylight raid at work and going down to the basement with her colleagues. “I wasn’t really frightened, you just hoped for the best,” she said.
Later she joined the Land Army, helping grow food. She remembered standing on a big stack of wheat above a noisy threshing machine. “I was feeding the wheat down into the threshing machine. It was frightening, awful, up there,” she said.
Mrs Sims met her husband-to-be George when she was about 17. They married when she was 21 and later moved to a house in Hurst. It was at that same house that she died peacefully on June 28. Her son Tim lived with her.
Mrs Sims helped her husband with his highly regarded book-selling business and typed the books, including thrillers and poetry, which he wrote. She also collected for charities including the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and the NSPCC. Mr Sims died in 1999.
The couple had two other children, Christopher of Henley, and Linda of Devon. There are three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
