MEMBERS voted on this year's resolutions at the May meeting and the result will be passed on to Westfield W.I. who will be sending a representative to the AGM at Liverpool.
The speaker this month was Bob Ogley and his subject was the hurricane in the early hours of October 16th 1987.
Bob lived in the Toys Hill area so experienced the devastation first hand. He believes he is the last person to have seen the woods bef
ore they they were destroyed as he walked home through them late on the evening of the 15th.
During the storm the whole sky was lit us by pylons being hit by falling trees. It was after visiting Sevonoaks on behalf of his newspaper that he hired the last operational plane from Biggin Hill to fly him and a photographer over the devasted areas.
From this sprang the idea of a book which was in the best seller list top ten for eight months.
The book had to be ready for the Christmas market and 5,000 were printed in the first edition. These sold out in a week and eventually 22,000 were sold by Christmas.
Bob has donated much of his profits to help people affected by the storm and continued to do so after being invited to Jamaica to see what a real hurricane can do.
This was the infamous hurricane Gilbert and his resulting book sold very well which helped fund research on sickle cell aneamia.
The October 16 storm was not strictly speaking a hurricane but the winds did reach 110 mph amd Sussex caught the brunt of the winds as it was the first landfall after which it made its way as far as East Anglia.
Bob was warmly thanked for his interesting talk about the storm and his other interests such as Biggin Hill and the Doodlebugs.
The next meeting is for members only who will enjoy the music of Louise Denny and a strawberry tea.
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