William (Bill) Cooksey
Bill was born in the village of Deri in the coal mining area of South Wales.
His father was diagnosed with TB soon after his birth and became permanently unemployed so the family lived in poverty on 57p a week national assistance. William had 5 siblings, 4 of whom died between 1922 and 1934. During the 1926 miner’s strike they used the village soup kitchen.
In 1933, William won a free scholarship to Lewis School, Pengam, a prestigious grammar school (Neil Kinnock was Head Prefect in the 1950s).
In 1937 the family moved to Papworth near Cambridge. Bill joined the RAF in April 1940 as an airframe fitter and spent four years in the Middle East during World War 2. His convoy was torpedoed in mid-Atlantic, which missed his ship and hit an adjacent troop ship.
He narrowly escaped being captured in the Western Desert in July 1942. William later flew as an extra lookout in a Wellington Bomber in operations from Benghazi with an Air Sea Rescue Squadron. Posted to a Communication Flight he was later forced to land in Cyprus with engine trouble. He spent 6 weeks living in the aircraft waiting for a new engine.
In 1948 he was posted to a Flying Training School in Southern Rhodesia and secretly married Kathleen in June 1950 in Bulawayo for a total cost £5.2s.6d spending their honeymoon at Victoria Falls cost £30.
In 1951 the couple returned to the UK and settled near Cambridge. He was employed in various occupations including farm work, factory work, photographer and journalist and served twelve years as Clerk to Harlton Parish Council as well as producing a monthly parish magazine on a hand operated duplicator which he sold for £1 a copy.
William qualified as a teacher at Saffron Walden (Cambridge University), he left state education after teaching at a junior school in Cambridge from 1971 to 1981 and became a private tutor. His other accolades include writing some of the first computer programmes for schools with the ZX81 and Spectrum and published his own books. From the proceeds he purchased his first home in 1984.
The couple moved to Newton Aycliffe in 1991. They had 3 children – all University trained teachers. The youngest is now the Headmaster of The International School in Sweden.
Kathleen passed away in 2017 after being married for 67 years. William celebrated his 100th birthday on Thursday 19th August 2021 by walking along the seafront at Seaton Carew and enjoying a fish and chip lunch. The following day he rode six miles on his tricycle.