Rita was incredible at the Service - she delivered a beautiful, moving, heartfelt and loving tribute to Donald and his life together.  You can read it in below:

Thank you for coming today, the personal visits, offers of help, beautiful flowers and the amazing 67 condolence cards.
Sharne and I have been very touched by the recurrent theme of lovely words in those cards, illustrating the affection and closeness so many people shared with our dear Donald, expressing what a wonderful man he was:
“a perfect gentleman with an affectionate nature, who gave wonderful hugs to people who enjoyed his friendship and being associated with him.
The appreciation of his community work and how much the many improvements and extra facilities achieved for the Maylands is valued. 
Thank you also very much for the support & help you have given to us over the long period of Donald’s illness, especially the lifts to & from the various venues involved in his care since September last year once I was no longer able to drive.
These enabled us to be able to spend precious time together at his various care establishments, but also at some special local events, providing Donald with the comfort and support of still feeling connected to the village and community he loved.  An invaluable support to us, which will never be forgotten.
It is devastating to have lost my precious Donald whom I have known for 70 years.  We met as students at college and I am so grateful to have shared 64.5 years of happy married life with him, having shared the joy of raising two lovely daughters.  Although the loss of Cathy in January is a great sadness, it is a comfort to think of them now together again.
With the unique opportunity of having a captive audience, I would like to share a little of Donald’s early years with you.
Donald was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1935 where he lived until aged 3, before moving with his parents and elder sister Kathena, to Ballymena, County Antrim.  Kathena still lives in Ballycastle.
At only 17 years of age Donald came to England having been clever enough to secure a place on the Ford Motor Company Scholarship programme by passing the annual, nationwide scholarship entrance examination, to attend their South East Essex Technical College course in Barking Essex.
Living in digs in Barking was not a pleasant experience for Donald.
As he commenced the 2nd year of the course, I arrived at the college to start my one year’s Secretarial course where I quickly spotted this handsome young man!!
As Don could never afford to buy a ticket to attend the college dances (and did not dance) he helped out instead by checking tickets at the door and selling raffle tickets.  The story Donald enjoyed telling was that he won me in a raffle, having first met while trying to sell me a raffle ticket at the college St Valentine’s Day dance, and had become intrigued by the fact that I knew his name – not hard as everyone knew him as “Paddy”!
There was a “ladies invitation” opportunity at that dance, and Jim Britten and Eunice (already dating together) encouraged me to ask Donald to dance.
Having refused, as his pockets were weighed down with money from his raffle ticket sales, he returned later to dance with me.
As Donald’s birthday was in January, he was just 19
when we met and, when a few weeks later, he asked me to be his girlfriend and discovered I was still 16, he joked that he was a cradle snatcher!
By the time he reached his 21st birthday he was so much part of our family my mother held a small birthday party for him.
We married in 1959 working hard for three years  renovating run down, property in Hornchurch, which when sold gave us a good enough deposit for a small  bungalow in Billericay where we had our first daughter.  We moved out to Mayland daughter, to gain more living space and garden before we had our second daughter, we moved to Mayland where properties were so much cheaper as there was no main or surface water drainage, no made up roads and very unreliable electricity.
Donald and I are very proud of the two fantastic daughters we raised, who continued to contribute to the world in wonderful ways with the same underlying principles we were taught by our parents, of attempting to be decent human beings trying to help improve the world and people’s existence.
The girls and I were very proud of all that Donald managed to achieve for the Maylands while still doing a demanding fulltime job.
It was tough being a Ford wife – with all the travel Donald had to do – especially in the early days.  But it was great that he could enjoy his work and see so many different countries and cultures courtesy of the Company.
It was important for me that he had the chance to enjoy his work, having watched my father, after he was discharged from the army after WW2, spend the rest of his life in a job he disliked just to keep the family fed.
This made me determined that my husband would have a job and career he could enjoy.
 
It is a comfort to feel that Donald is now with Cathy and they are together again.
 
That’s it – thank you again to all of you.