Today I deposited some items with the Wirral Archive Service; these related to Mum’s involvement with Inner Wheel in later years. She does not seem to have left any records of her earliest involvement. Yet this organisation was important – all-important in many ways – to her. While she was in the “care” home in her final years, my sister wrote down her responses in a “from me to you” book. Mum stated that “If I could go back in time and be younger again, I’d love to be in an important position in Inner Wheel again.”
Inner Wheel in Wallasey had been founded in 1949, with its first meeting on September 7 1949. One of its founders, and its first secretary, was “Phyl” Boughey, my grandmother and Mum’s mother-in-law; in July 1951 she became the third president of Inner Wheel. After my father joined Rotary, in 1959, Mum was eligible to join Inner Wheel (it was then open to the wives of Rotarians only, something which has since changed). Her first meeting was on 2 December 1959, and my grandmother introduced her.
Much to her surprise, Mum would become President herself in July 1964, just before we moved house. She had been International Representative since September 1962. In June 1964, she gave her final report in this position, and mentioned that there were plans to form an International Inner Wheel. She would, much later, become involved in this as Editor, would become National President of Inner Wheel in 1992, and would be President of Wallasey four times in all.
There is much to record about Inner Wheel, an organisation I grew up with, but I will write about this separately.
5 March 2020
Joan Boughey Recalled 