On July 9, 2016, Marjorie Drakeford (neé Joly) passed away peacefully in the United Kingdom. Born in Beirut, Mrs. Drakeford was the granddaughter of Ernest Joly (buried IV G 1), daughter of Kenneth Joly (buried IV H 2), and sister of John Joly (buried IV B 4). She was also the aunt of AACA president Harriet Joly. Ms. Drakeford took great interest in the history of the Anglo-American community in Beirut, independently publishing in 1997 All Saints' Church Beirut, Lebanon and the Community that Built it, which outlined the history of the All Saints' International Congregation, whose pastor sits on the Anglo-American Cemetery Association. A eulogy was given by her son David and is reproduced with permission below.
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It is with great sadness that David
Drakeford and Hil Piering announce the death, at 93, of their mother Marjorie
Drakeford (Joly); daughter of Kenneth and Gertrude Joly, sister of John Joly
and aunt to Susan, Harriet and Dominic Joly. Marjorie was born and grew up in
Beirut, Lebanon and by her own account it was an idyllic childhood. She
attended school in England at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. She spent the war
years in Jerusalem where she met her husband and where David was born. Shortly
before the end of the war she returned to England where Hilary was born and
where she lived for the rest of her life mostly in two small villages, Elham in
Kent and Brockhampton in Gloucestershire, where she was heavily involved in
village life. The latter part of her life she lived in Cheltenham and was
involved in the Citizens Advice Bureau as an advisor and tutor.
Hilary and David remember her as a devoted
mother who was always there for us through some difficult times. We remember
her as always able to laugh even when things got tough for her as they did on
more than one occasion. She was devoted to her family and accepted Hilary’s spouses
Richard and Scott and David’s wife Victoria, as well as grandchildren Sam and
Wil’s wives Andrea and Lianne with love and affection. She was a devoted grandmother
to four grandchildren, Sam, Wil, Katie and Andrew and great-grandmother to twin
great-grandchildren, Rudy and Lux. Her love of family also extended to her
extended family and she was able to provide a base in England for her brother
and his family as well as cousins, aunts and uncles. Always a gifted story
teller, in later life she became the documenter of both her mother’s and her
father’s families of which she was intensely proud and she wrote an extensive history of Henry Heald
and Co, the family firm in Beirut.
She was a quietly and sincerely ethical
person and had an integrity that ran to all things in her life and which arose
in part from her Christian faith in all its love and simplicity. She was
intensely interested in all the large variety of people she met in her
extensive travels, back to the Middle East, to India, to the US and Europe and
to Canada where her son and his family now live. This interest and concern for
all peoples was evident in her relations with the carers, from many parts of
the world, who looked after her with care in the last few years of her life, in
a home in Cheltenham. Her children, grandchildren and great- grandchildren as
well as family and many friends continued to visit her to the end of her
remarkable life.
She is greatly missed.
