With all three children at university, Mum turned to her own university studies; her new qualifications enabled her to enter Open University and spend 8 years obtaining an Honours degree. She also took on other commitments with Inner Wheel at District level, which involved much travel to North Wales branches in the mid-1970s.
Boating holidays continued, but less with family and more with JPJB alone. Trips included one on canals in France in 1981. JPJB acquired the last of five boats in 1980, Dudley No.3, which was still based at Nantwich when she died. He became Commodore of the Nantwich & Border Counties Yacht Club in 1980, and Joan became Newsletter editor.
All three children graduated during this period, and all pursued postgraduate research. All were married – the eldest daughter in 1981, the other two in 1982 – and set up their own homes. JPJB lost his father Horace, after a long illness, in 1980, after which his mother Phyl came to need support and moved into a nursing home. Others were lost in the early 1980s – JPJB’s younger cousin Ron, his American Aunt Edie, and Joan’s cousin Frank, with whom she had spent much time in childhood. More happily, JPJB saw the first of what would be four grandchildren in 1984.
Finally, and very unexpectedly, JPJB himself died in 1986, from a heart attack lifting suitcases into his car at Grove Road. Joan was at an Inner Wheel event in Mold, and JPJB was to join her there and go on to a weekend in Llandudno. She waited for many hours outside the Theatr Clwyd in Mold, until eventually the news came through. A very kind couple from Tywyn, attending the event, kindly ran her home from Mold, and she became friends after this.
Joan Boughey Recalled 