A LONG-SERVING Didcot volunteer, who helped at the town’s Ladygrove Day Centre for 22 years before going there herself as a pensioner, has died.

Norah Glasson, who volunteered at the Britwell Road centre between 1971 and 1993, was 89 when she died on April 18.

She had been living at The Meadows Care Home, next door to the centre, for five years.

Prior to that, she lived at Royal Berkshire Court, Didcot.

Born in Margate, Kent, in 1920, she went into service aged 14 for a nearby family.

After nursing her grandmother, who died of cancer, she was forced to stop work when she contracted diptheria, aged 18. She survived, but was left with a weak heart.

In May 1940, she married RAF serviceman Kenneth Glasson, whom she had met when her family moved to Gosport.

But she was soon on the move again when Mr Glasson was posted to India and then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Mrs Glasson gave birth to two of their three children, Michael and Margery, before sailing home to Cornwall with them on her own in 1945.

Mr Glasson returned home in 1947 and the couple went on to have a second son, Allan.

Mrs Glasson spent 11 years moving to different parts of the UK as her husband completed tours of duty around the world.

The couple moved to Brasenose Road in Didcot in 1971 and then Fleet Meadow.

Mrs Glasson began working almost full time at the Didcot Ladygrove Day Centre.

Her husband died in 1984, aged 63.

In her later years, she moved to Amersham to be closer to her youngest son, but he died five months after she moved.

She spent time at the Red Cross Care Centre in the town, campaigning to raise money for a new minibus and fighting its cause in the media when it was threatened with closure, before moving back to Didcot in 2002.

Mrs Glasson leaves two children, Michael, Margery — Allan died five years ago aged 50 — four grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren and a great-great granddaughter.

Her funeral was held at Oxford Crematorium on Tuesday.