February 19, 2019. Madison, Mississippi. Gwen Badelley Skelton.

Gwen died peacefully this evening in Victoria, British Columbia. For that I am grateful because Gwen had been in a home for 8 years with increasing amount os senility. I recall with joy being her friend since we were young in Toronto. She attended Earlscourt Corps of The Salvation Army while I attended Danforth Corps but we went to cams together and we both attended North Toronto Collegiate Institution so often walked home together. We were good friends. Gwen's parents were officers but her father died when she was young and her mother was stationed at headquarters in Toronto. Gwen often said that the army did not know what to do with a single married lady with a little girl. Her mother was quiet and gentle while Gwen was not. When she was a teenager she was noisy and full of fun. Her hair was curly and blond and she had a chronic hoard throat. She was energetic and outgoing, the opposite of her mother who would just shake her head at Gwen's antics. Gwen was at the Corps Cadet Congress in London in 1956 with men. We had a grand time. When young, Gwen played the dumb blond to great aplomb. But she was not dumb. After high school she became a nurse and moved to Victoria, where she lived the rest of her life. She married George Skelton, who was a fine husband, who loyally tended to Gwen the last ten years of her life. They had a good life, working hard and traveling as much as possible. Ken and I and the boys visited them in Victoria and enjoyed their company and I saw Gwen in Victoria on a business trip. Gwen and George came to our 50th anniversary in Nova Scotia but something had changed with Gwen. Friends who had known her for years kept asking me what had happened to Gwen because she seemed to have no energy, which was the opposite of the Gwen we knew and loved. But Gwen had begun the long slow decline and at the 50th she was not able to recall names. So she kept quiet. Her Mother was also in an institution in her later years which makes life doubly sad. I give thanks for the life of Gwennie. She was funny. And she was a good nurse and an active soldier of the Victoria Corps. I have been missing her for years. But now we say a final goodbye. She was one of a kind.