21 years fly by

With so many new groups and new members, I thought to re-publish some of my earlier works, they are hidden at the back of so many pages!

Enjoy!

7th February 1987.

My father was a great guy. I was a daddy's girl, and only got close to my mother after his death.

Geoffrey Herbert Steele, only child of George Frederick Steele and Muriel Maude.

Born 27th June 1914 in Potchefstroom, So. Africa, died 7th February 1987 in Glendale, CA. While visiting me, he caught a cold that he didn't look out for and contracted pneumonia, and was gone. Oddly enough, my mother did the same thing to me in 2005 when at the age of 94 she came out from England to visit and died. So they are together here at their old church and that is, I suppose, how it is supposed to be.

My father was the child of the British Army. His father was the Brig. Gen. of the First Royal Dragoons, British Cavalry. George was stationed in So. Africa after the Boer War and Muriel went to visit and dad was born in a tin hut somewhere on the veldt!

He left 10 weeks later and returned to England with his mother. Unfortunately the First World War claimed my grand-fathers' life in 1915 in Ypres, Northern France, in command of his regiment, so my dad never knew his own father. His mother married Alistair Sinclair Campbell, who had also fought in WWI. He owned a tea plantation in Shanghai, China so my fathers' first school was the Cathedral School in Shanghai. Again tragedy struck when Jimmie, as his step-father was called, died as a result of having been Mustard Gassed in the First war. So at 35 my grand-mother was widowed twice and that was that.

My dad never liked the Regular Army. his father, and indeed the male line of his family were all practically wiped out, but duty calls and after being trained at Eton and Sandhurst, the West Point of Britain, where he was a champion high hurdler, and supposed to go to the 1936 Olympics, but had to join his regiment in India and Egypt. He got hepititis, which anti-bodies he passed onto me, he came back and pursued his love of the theatre. He worked for the BBC in the early days of television, and acted in and produced the very first play ever broadcast on TV anywhere in the world, it was called "Marigold".

His mother and he came out to Hollywood, CA. and lived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. One day in 1941 while around the swimming pool he met a young actress, my mother, Mildred Shay and four days later they went to Las Vegas and got married! They remained married till dad's death in 1987.

Shortly after their marriage, WWII was in full swing in Britain and they returned to London so he could re-join his regiment. Being an actor he did training films in Yorkshire and avoided combat. Thank God, and his entire regiment was wiped out at Bengazzi.

After the war they remained in London, I came along in 1949.

Post war Britain was a dismal place and my dad soon got a job at NBC in New York. The Korean War was on and they had to fill in jobs of the guys fighting over there. When the war was over they got their jobs back and we moved out to Hollywood and there my dad, and mum  had full acting careers. You can still see my dad in "Casablanca", Terror by Night" and "Funny Girl", to name a few of the 30 or so films he did.

So on this day, 21 years ago, we lost him, but on celluloid he remains forever.

God bless dad. Love ya!

Georgie