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STANLEY HOOPER
Born : We st L y nch, Somerset, 1910
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Stanley Hooper is the oldest of three. Several months premature when he was born, he confounded everyone by surviving. His father died when he was still a boy. He picked whortleberries so he could buy boots for school and looked after the garden at home. He has always liked gardening and once won 14 prizes at Porlock Flower Show, seven of them firsts.
By the time he was 14 he was hauling sand and shingle from Bossington beach for the local builders, with two horses and a butt. He has been farm worker, woodsman, water bailiff and gamekeeper, and thought nothing of walking 25 miles on his rounds. He also spent 26 years as a volunteer coastguard.
He and his wife Gwen moved to Allerford when they married, across the valley from Lynch and the cottage where he was born. It is at Lynch that Mark photographed him, at a meet of the Minehead Harriers.
postscript - Stanley Hooper died in May 2002