“The Woman Who Got Things Done” is how a former colleague described my mother, Auriol Earle, who has died aged 93. There is no better way of describing her.
Born in Totnes, Devon, Auriol was the elder child of Col Guy Lucas, an army officer, and his wife, Audrey (nee Smith), a professional tennis coach who appeared at Wimbledon in the 1930s. Auriol was among the first women to attend university, graduating from Exeter with a degree in English literature in 1949. Her interest in education was matched by that of her husband-to-be, Eric Earle, an Irishman. After an impossibly romantic encounter involving trains, coinciding job interviews and Waterloo station, they married in 1952.
Eric worked for the Colonial Education Service and soon afterwards was posted to the West African colony of the Gold Coast. In what was soon to become Ghana, Auriol threw herself into starting a family and helping to establish an international nursery school for the colonial community and local Ghanaians.
The family returned to England in 1961, and set up home in Guildford, Surrey. They divided a large house in two with one half taken by their lifelong friends, Bill and Nick Smyth, and their three children. Auriol and Eric filled the other half by adding a fourth child to their own family.
Never contained by family life and always concerned to enlarge the lives of others, in the 1960s Auriol set up, with her friend Pauline Gough, Guildford Holiday Fun, which mobilised a small army of enthusiastic volunteers to offer sports, art and craft classes at a nominal fee to hundreds of schoolchildren.
Auriol became actively involved in developing the arts in Guildford, including through her work at Surrey University as an associate lecturer developing a general studies module for engineering students. She served as Liberal Democrat councillor representing the people of Worplesdon on Guildford borough council for several years from 1995. As chair of the arts and recreation committee, she pushed through plans for a skate park, despite encountering stiff opposition from other councillors who felt it would disrupt the tranquillity of Stoke Park. It opened in 1998 and was quickly embraced by the skater community because it was well designed and a decent size.
Auriol and Eric were a dynamic and unbroken partnership. For 60 years their home and garden in Guildford were always open to friends and relations. Together they travelled the world and much of Ireland, loving the adventures arising from visiting their children in Botswana, Australia, the US and Norwich.
Auriol was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2017.
She is survived by Eric, their children, Wendy, Jennifer, Patrick and me, and seven grandchildren, Chloe, Samuel, Joe, Rosa, Niall, Hannah and Eva.
