My mother, Trixie Chandler, who has died aged 93, was a psychiatric nurse who became a vicar’s wife and then, after our father’s untimely death, retrained to become a teacher.
Born in Camberwell, south London, Trixie (born Beatrice) was the second of four children to May (nee White) and her husband, Alfred Kilsby, who were school caretakers. She was educated at St Saviour’s and St Olave’s grammar school, where she met her lifelong friend Joy Evans. When the two teenage girls were evacuated to Sussex during the second world war, Joy’s family were killed in a bomb raid in London, and Trixie supported Joy through that difficult time.
After leaving school Trixie trained to be a psychiatric nurse, and then worked at the Maudsley psychiatric hospital in Camberwell. At her local church, St George’s in Camberwell, she met Ernest Chandler, an ordained priest, and they married in 1951. Thereafter Trixie fulfilled the role of a curate and vicar’s wife, first at St Wulfram’s Church in Grantham, Lincolnshire, then in 1955 at St Dunstan’s Church in Cheam, Surrey (where she ran the Young Wives’ group as well as looking after her two young daughters), and in 1958 at St Luke’s Church in Whyteleafe, Surrey, where she established a successful Mother’s Union.
However, that part of her life came to an abrupt end in 1962 when Ernest died of a heart attack at the age of 38. Showing great strength of character, Trixie not only continued to look after her family but learned to drive, bought a house in Caterham, Surrey, and trained to become a teacher at Sydney Webb college in London, working first at a private school before moving to teach religious education at Purley grammar school for girls. She later became an education welfare officer for Surrey county council until her retirement in 1983, after which she spent three years travelling regularly to visit my sister, Ruth, in the US.
In 1986 Trixie moved to Canterbury, where she volunteered at Kent and Canterbury hospital, working with the chaplaincy team. She also took a degree in arts and humanities with the Open University, and then another, in French, at the University of Kent. After that she joined the University of the Third Age and studied French, Latin, Hebrew, German, and the works of Charles Dickens. She began learning Italian in her 70s and was still going in her 80s.
Trixie had supported her brother, David, throughout his life, and she joined him in her final years at the Methodist care home in Whitstable, Kent, where she did crosswords, played scrabble, played the piano and advised the chaplain on his Hebrew.
She was a kind, loving, patient and calm person. Fiercely independent, she was always someone her family could go to for sympathy and support.
She is survived by Ruth and me, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
