School's oldest "old boy" is a hundred this week

    DOVER Grammar School for Boys' oldest "old boy" celebrated HER 100th birthday this week.
    Lily Valentine Turnpenny, who lives with her son John in Park Avenue, Dover, was born on St Valentine's Day 1893.
    She was one of the first girl students in the co-educational Sixth Form at Dover County School, now the grammar school, and was allowed to complete her studies there when Kent Education Committee took over in about 1908 and ordered that no more girls should be accepted.
    Her father John Vass worked for a Glasgow-based shipping company and he was posted to Limerick in Ireland as quay manager.
    He married a Scottish school teacher and Lily and her sister Greta were born there.

Memories of 1897

    In 1897, when Lily was four, the family moved to Dover and lived in Folkestone Road. She went to Belgrave Road infants school - and remembers the first day well and later St Mary's infants.
    When she was 12 she was admitted to the girls' department of the fee-paying county school on Priory Hill and was then selected with a few other girls to join, for the first time, the boys' Sixth Form in what is now the technical college in Ladywell.
    At one stage she was the only girl left in the school.
    She passed her examinations and a scholarship and was admitted to university, at the Bedford College for Women in London, where she obtained a BA degree.
    In 1915 Lily returned to Dover, then in the forefront of the war against Germany, and worked in the National Provincial Bank before transferring to the same bank in London.
    In 1919 Lily married her schooldays' friend Sidney Turnpenny, a member of the Dover furnishing family, who had been war-wounded.
    They returned to Dover and had two children, Suzanne (now 72) and John. now 69.
    There are three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
    During the Second World War Lily helped with the family business and assisted as a volunteer at Dover's, food office.
    She's always been interested in theatre and has been a keen Supporter of Dover Operatic and Dramatic Society.

    "To tell you the truth I would have loved to be an actress. But I have been a simple wife and mother.

    I have no time for 'women's lib' and things like that.
    "I like a man to be the head of the house," she says, Mrs Turnpenny is still very active and has an excellent memory of her early days in Dover.
    She's up most mornings at seven o'clock, does all the housework, has a rest in the afternoon and in the evening watches television or listens to the radio.
    And she's very proud of her son John, who was for five years chairman of Dover magistrates and is chairman of the governors of Dover College.
    One of her pet hates is having her photograph taken. That's why we have no picture of her!