Brenda Evans (nee Stevens)

05/03/1918 – 27/02/2012

Attended Godalming Grammar School 1930 – 1934

Brenda was one of the first pupils to attend the new Godalming Grammar School in 1930. She was very happy there, feeling it a privilege to be one of the first pupils. She matriculated well and left to take up a clerical post with a coach building firm near Farnham. She married William George (Bill) Martin in 1936 and moved away and their daughter Sally was born in 1938. Sadly Bill was killed during the war and so Brenda moved back to Haslemere where Sally became the first “second generation” child to attend the Grammar School. Brenda later married David Hastings Evans and they remained together for 61 years, until David’s death in 2010.

Brenda had a lifelong interest in the Grammar School and was the first president of the Old Godhelmian Association. She regularly attended re-unions, most recently in 2004. Brenda had many interests and hobbies, keeping herself active on retirement with charity work, gardening, sewing and letter writing, especially to the OGs many of whom she maintained a lifelong friendship with, as well as doing puzzles and crosswords. She cared for her husband with enormous dedication and gained huge pleasure from her family, including recent great granddaughters.

She came from a background of hard working country folk and Sally writes that she was “forged in hard times which influenced her character and attitudes and formed a tough little package. She left us with something of an enigma. How could such a small package leave such a large void