This was something Jenny wrote as a little speech for Shirley's 70th birthday celebrations

I first met Shirley in September 1962 when fortune decreed that we should both be in the same set of student nurses together.  On the first day we all had to meet up at St Georges Hospital, Hyde Park Corner (now the Lanesborough Hotel) and I saw this composed looking girl sitting on her own, but standing out from the large crowd of mainly 18 year olds.  We introduced ourselves and so began our nursing careers and 42 years of friendship.  A coach transported us from Hyde Park Corner to Tooting in the depths of South London and I soon found out that the composed looking girl was far from that - we were both ridiculously apprehensive about what we had let ourselves in for - and anyway, what were we doing about to spend 6 weeks in Tooting, when we had anticipated being in a more glamorous part of London.

Shirley had been a world travelled secretary with the WHO and chose, in her late 20's, to give it all up and undertake 4 years of nursing training, on a paltry salary and, to start with, life in a box room with a communal bathroom and "must be in by 11pm"!  BUT we had 3 square meals a day and a most fetching uniform of grey stripes (analogy to prison life would not be out of place here).

Six weeks of preliminary training school prepared us (or was supposed to) for life on the wards.  All too soon we were let loose on real patients, supervised by terrifying ward sisters and staff nurses who in turn answered to Matron.

If anyone was born to nurse it was Shirley.  She was the most professional and at the same time caring nurse I ever new and so good at everything she did.  After 4 years at St Georges she went on to do her midwifery training in Bristol, returned to St Georges to be a night sister (lucky student nurses) and then to Cheltenham for the Health Visitor course and another chapter in her varied life.  I'm quite sure that, if a certain Major Chester had not been waiting in the wings, Shirley would have become Director of Nursing for the UK and brought back Matron and proper nurse training as we knew it.