My friend Barbara Jones, who has died aged 80 from motor neurone disease, was a person of high principles, human warmth and sympathy. For many years, she was active in our local group of Amnesty International in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. Barbara took on the role of organising sufficient volunteers so that there could be fundraising street stalls three or four times a year.
Barbara was the younger daughter of Rose and Harold Jones, and spent her childhood in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, where her father was a headmaster. He had fought in the first world war and was mentioned in dispatches, which sparked Barbara’s own interest in the war. She began training as a nurse in 1954 at St Thomas’ hospital, London, and had a varied career. Her last job before retiring to Kenilworth was as a lecturer at the Hotel and Catering Industries Training Board in Shrewsbury.
Her greatest achievement at Amnesty in Kenilworth was that the stalls ran smoothly year after year – a tribute to her powers of persuasion. When raising a group of us to stand with our tins collecting money on a “flag day”, Barbara recruited everyone by phone. She cajoled them, listened to them, sympathised with their problems, sent cards if she knew they were poorly, and even tried to comfort them in their difficulties. She was a difficult person to say no to. We volunteers used to talk about her fondly but in some awe – feeling that we could not let her down.
Barbara was formidable in the best sense of that word, kind and empathetic. She had a remarkable ability to make relationships: it was this that made her such an effective ambassador for AI. She was very well organised, detested meetings, hated computers and never used email, and proved that effectiveness depends so often on personal skills and not technology.
She was an active member of the Western Front Association and often visited the first world war battlefields. She also ran the local Poppy Day appeals for several years.
Barbara is survived by her sister, Edna, and a niece and nephew.
