A ROYAL Navy veteran from Dorchester marking his 100th birthday raised £700 for charity at his celebratory dinner.
Wilfred George Edwin Osborne, known locally as George, held a lunch at the Colliton Club in Dorchester which was attended by 60 guests.
Instead of asking for presents, the Dorchester resident requested that donations be made in support of The Children’s Society - a cause close to his late wife’s heart.
In total £700 was raised much to the delight of George and his family.
George joined the Royal Navy in 1937 and on the outbreak of the Second World War he served on HMS Sheffield in the Denmark Straight.
He helped to escort convoys to Malta, hunting the German Bismarck in the Atlantic Ocean and also escorting convoys to Russia.
In later life, Kent-born George settled in the county town after meeting and marrying a girl from the town. He became the founding chairman of the Dorchester branch of the Royal Naval Association (RNA).
Roy Dean, secretary of the Dorchester RNA, said: “George was the founding chairman of the Dorchester Branch of the Royal Naval Association, was for a time the Dorchester Town Beadle and was a Past Noble Grand of the Dorchester Hand-in-Hand Lodge of the Oddfellows.
“After the special delivery of his congratulatory card from Her Majesty the Queen, George celebrated his birthday at a Mess Deck Lunch in the Junction Hotel Dorchester, accompanied by his children and their spouses, and attended by his shipmates from the Dorchester Branch of the RNA.”
George left the Navy in 1962 and settled in Dorchester working as a postman and then a counter clerk at the main Post Office in the county town.
It was in Dorchester he met his wife Molly. She died in 2000.
Mr Dean continued: “On a cold, wet Monday morning in 1947, George and his mate alighted from the Mail Train in Dorchester.
“With time on their hands they headed into town, George's first impression of Dorchester was ‘what a godforsaken place’ little did he realise that he would meet and marry a Dorchester girl and that at the end of his Naval Service would spend the rest of his life living there.”
Share