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Pamela Moore – a woman of conviction
THE ashes of Pamela Moore, who was for 20 years secretary of Christ Church School, Hampstead, were scattered on her beloved Hampstead Heath by her family on Sunday February 19.
As Pamela Valdar, she had been at the heart of left wing politics in Hampstead, leaving the Young Communistic League before spending several years as a secretary at the LSE.
Hers was a life marked by tragedy. Her father died early, and she and her siblings spent years at an orphanage in Surrey.
In her teens she married journalist Stewart Valdar, editor of the now-defunct Hampstead News and a co-founder of the Press Gazette, but two of their four children died young: Tim, in an accident at 17, and Kate, who succumbed to cancer at 35.
The spot chosen for her ashes faced No 27 Willow Road, her first married home immediately after World War Two.
Not far away was Wentworth Mansions, South End Green, where she first met Stewart Valdar, and Troyes House, Lawn Road, their second home. Up the hill in the other direction was their third Hampstead home, Carnegie House, New End.
At the private ceremony were their son, UCL professor Andy Valdar, who remembered playing at the spot with his younger brother Tim, and his sister Sarah Chapman, now a junior school teacher, and three of the Valdar’s grandchildren, Melanie Johnston, Zoe, and Lucy Chapman.
She had died peacefully at home in Eye, Suffolk, during dinner with her second husband, Trevor Moore, in December, aged 79. Her friend Colin Cooper said: “She retained her strong convictions, but they never got in the way of human relations. She was always warm and communicative, invariably helpful and supportive to others.”
Paul Keilthy |
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