On many occasion a situation will occur that makes you think "Why haven't I done that before?" and this rambling, is one such time.

Stevenage VW Club (SVWC) is the longest running VW club in the UK and until fairly recently the club had a chairman by the name of Ron Frost. Ron had been the Chairman of the club since anyone can remember, in fact, speaking to other club members, none can remember any other Chairman of the club, and thus it was with great sadness that Ron passed away at the grand age of 76 after a brief illness.
The tragedy however, was not his death itself. Death comes to us all eventually and is one of the things we can all count on. The tragedy is the loss of knowledge. Let me explain. A few months after Ron died his widow 'Mary' provided the club with a box of assorted memorabilia, photos, flags and articles from SVWC of the past.

This included many photographs of Stevenage VW Club in the sixties and seventies, painting a picture of the club when it was in it's infancy, along with some seriously dodgy hairdo's and fashion tragedies. Nobody in the club even knew that these photo's existed and consequently it is very difficult to know any history of what the photo's depict. It would have been great to be able to talk to Ron about the photo's and the history behind them.

So why didn't Ron show us these before? They say you learn more about a person at their funeral than from talking to them in life. I have found this to be true on many occasions. Whether Ron simply forgot he had the photos or whether he felt the younger generation with Playstations, computers and mobile phones would not be interested in a bunch of old photos, we'll never know. And why didn't we the younger generation ever ask Ron about any memories or photos or anything he had relating to the club? It was certainly not because Ron was unapproachable or unwilling to talk about it. He was after all one of the nicest people I've ever met and happy to chat about pretty much anything. But it is not until something is gone that you realise what you have lost.
I recently read a book where the author set out to meet and talk to each and every one of the astronauts who had walked on the moon. Why? Because it had dawned on him that there were only nine of these astronauts left alive. Now in there seventies, the chances of any of them being alive in ten years time was slim. Meaning in a handful of years there would not be a single person alive on the planet who had experienced walking on the moon. All the experiences held in their minds will be lost forever. The astronauts who went to the moon have been questioned time and time again about their experiences on the moon, unlike your average person in the street.
I dare say Ron could have told us about the photo of the VW club in the sixties if we had asked, but more than that, what other stories could he have told us? I realise now that I didn't really know him at all and wished I'd spent more time to get to know him and his experiences.

How well do you know the people around you, even your own family? It might be nice to know a little bit of history before you realise you wish you'd asked.

Some of the photographs that were supplied by Ron's wife Mary, can be seen in the 'Club History' section here.