The late Charles Thomas West was born on the 18^th June 1933, Southwark, London to the parents of the late William Robert West and Florence West, during the time when the world leaders gathered in London to tackle the prolonged effects of the first world war.  Mr Thomas Charles West grew up in a large family of 13 siblings before the Second World War forced them out of London where the family members were split and Thomas Charles West was placed with a different family.

After the war, he came back to London and started making a living at the age of 13. Whilst working and living in South London, he met and married his first wife, Jeanette. They lived in a lovely relationship without children until sadly his wife Jeanette passed away.

Mr Thomas Charles West got his second luck at a later year of his life and married his current second wife Mrs Grace West and was wedded in the Summer of 1999.  As the second married was during his later age, this meant that they were unable to have children of their own, however, Grace had her own children with her.  Mr Thomas Charles West and Grace West as husband and wife enjoyed 22 years of happy marriage.  Mr Thomas Charles West embraced his new family wholeheartedly as his own, and the family found love and security in him as the best dad and a grandfather in the world.  He led and managed the family in a gracious and compassionate way, which earned him to be known in the family with a respectable title of Grand Dad.  

Grand Dad left behind 3 stepchildren and 5 grandchildren and many nephews and nieces.

Poem for Tom

Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918, Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral

Death is nothing at all

I have only slipped away into the next room I am I and you are you

Whatever we were to each other That we are still

Call me by my old familiar name Speak to me in the easy way you always used

Put no difference into your tone Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

Laugh as we always laughed

At the little jokes we always enjoyed together Play, smile, think of me, pray for me

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was

Let it be spoken without effort Without the ghost of a shadow in it Life means all that it ever meant

It is the same as it ever was There is absolute unbroken continuity What is death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind Because I am out of sight?

1 am waiting for you for an interval Somewhere very near

Just around the corner All is well.

Nothing is past; nothing is lost

One brief moment and all will be as it was before How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!