The funeral of long-time London Owl Gillian Jenkins took place this week.
Gillian, who was a member of our club for more than 40 years, died in hospital on April 18 after suffering a brain haemorrhage.
Her funeral was held at the Three Counties Crematorium, Braintree, on Monday, the service closing to the strains of Terry Curran’s ‘Singing the Blues’, before people shared their fond memories of Gillian at The White Hart in Halstead.
She leaves a partner, Graham, and daughter, Toni and we send our deepest sympathies to them and to all the family at such a difficult time.
Gillian was an avid follower of Wednesday for many years and joined the London Owls on several of our organised coach trips back in the eighties. In more recent years, she also became a regular traveller on our train journeys to both home games and away matches.
In fact, Gillian had been on the rail trip to watch our home match with Stoke, just a few days before her sudden death, and had already booked for the next Hillsborough game against West Brom last month … sadly a fixture she was not to witness.
The London Owls as a community and club has been left stunned and in disbelief over Gillian’s passing and Graeme Cooke, who used to travel with Gillian from Southend to join those matchday coach trips in the eighties, summed up his friend with these words:
‘With much sadness, I write following the untimely passing of my friend and London Owls legend Gillian Jenkins who died, quite unexpectedly, on April 18.
I don’t pretend to have known her better than others amongst the London Owls membership over the years but she and I went back a long way – to the early eighties in fact – which probably means that I knew her for longer than most.
We would travel together from Southend to meet up with our fellow Wednesdayites at King’s Cross for our executive coach travel to games all around the country
She was funny and loud, always loyal and reliable and she had a heart of gold.
The early to mid-eighties was a great time to be following the Owls as the club progressed steadily, season by season, culminating in promotion back to the old Division One (Premier League today) in the 1983-84 season.
We were pipped to the title by Chelsea but promotion was secured on the final day of the season with a 2-0 win at Cardiff City.
A particularly memorable day, including the party on the coach as we travelled back to London, albeit Gillian had to remain circumspect on the alcohol front as she was heavily pregnant with daughter Toni at the time.
They were heady days, travelling in style and supporting a successful football team with the London Owls – a great crowd of people – and Gillian was very much a central character in all this.
I went to work abroad for three years and so my meet-ups with Gillian became fewer and further between.
However, I was back in Southend in time for the 1993 cup runs and, together with Gillian and Darren Reynolds (another Southend-based Wednesdayite), we drove to Hillsborough for the FA Cup fifth round tie against Southend United, which took on extra significance for us because (obviously) it was our home town team we were up against.
Having won the match 2-0, we were back in Southend for 8pm and headed to The Railway pub for celebratory beers.
The pub started to fill with Southend supporters also having returned from Sheffield. Gillian went to the juke box, selected Singing the Blues, and proceeded to dance through the pub – Wednesday scarf aloft – like a mad thing. She took a bit of stick but she gave it back and more.
I last saw her at Wembley for last year’s play-off final when we met up, together with Darren, to enjoy what turned out to be one of those rare, truly memorable days in the life of a football supporter.
It would have been incomprehensible to imagine that I would be writing these words less than a year later.
The London Owls family has lost a lovely friend. Gillian’s partner, Graham, and daughter, Toni, have lost so much more and my heart goes out to them.
Fly high Gillian, my friend. You will be sadly missed … but the laughs we enjoyed will live forever.’
Lovely words from Graeme and sentiments echoed by all London Owls. RIP Gillian.