Generosity is par for Stoneleigh Deer Park golfers

Members of Stoneleigh Deer Park handed a cheque for £9,250 to Acorns Childrens Hospice representatives last week.

The money was raised between April last year and March through various events including auctions, tournaments, raffles, collections and competitions.

Keeping in the charity spirit, members recently made donations in memory of former senior captain Bill Jones and helped to raise £620 for the Haemotology Trust Fund.

Mr Jones, who along with his friend Alan Wild founded the club’s Stoneleigh Aged Gentleman Society (STAGS), died of the bone marrow disorder myelofibrosis aged 80 on March 15.

A former chorister and boy bishop at All Saints’ church in Warwick, Mr Jones also attended Leamington College for Boys and carried out his national service in Austria, which he said was like a long holiday.

Mr Jones spent 40 years working in the laboratory at the former Ford foundry in Leamington.

When he joined Stoneleigh the course was not in the same condition as it is today, with members being encouraged to pick up stones on the fairways.

His wife Ann remembers the early days of his membership when she would walk around the course with her husband before he could even hit a ball straight.

Mrs Jones, 74, who is now the club’s ladies’ captain, said: “Bill was a kind and generous man, everybody used to ask me if I dressed him because he was always so smart.

“He never had a bad work to say about anybody and the only thing he didn’t like was pigeons .

“I was one of the lucky ones, I can’t say I wish we had done this and that because we did it all.”

The money donated in Mr Jones’s memory will go to the Aylesford Unit at Warwick Hospital where he was treated.