Doreen Fitch Obituary
Doreen Fitch
23 September 1923 – 1 July 2022
Doreen Fitch was a remarkable woman. Not just because of the length of her life – she was nearly 99 when she died on 1 July – but because of how she lived her life.
Her links with Tooting Bec Lido and the South London Swimming Club go back to the 1940s. She liked to recount how she and Bob, her future husband, did a lot of their courting at ‘the Bec’ as it was then known. On the morning of their wedding in 1943, Bob famously insisted on having a swim before the ceremony – much to the annoyance of his mother-in-law!
A Tooting girl all her life, Doreen lived with her parents until her marriage and after that with her husband. They would go on to have two children: David and Pam. She must have realised, of course, that she was also entering a long-term relationship of a different kind – with an outsize, outdoor swimming pool.
While Bob ran his own successful window-cleaning business, Doreen took on a variety of clerical jobs. At one stage, she worked as book-keeper at a local school, honing skills for record-keeping and accuracy that she’d later bring to the swimming club.
Doreen herself was never a keen swimmer and was rarely tempted into the water. In her later years she would wait until the water temperature had reached at least 22ºC before venturing in. The cry would go up: ‘Doreen’s in!’ and a spontaneous round of applause would break out.
She was nonetheless a dedicated supporter of Bob’s passion for swimming. In the Fifties and Sixties she helped him run a splinter swimming club at the Lido – Bec Swimmers. She was also by her husband’s side when he led a delegation to Wandsworth Council in 1979 to stop the closure of the Lido during the winter – a folly, as he saw it, that could only lead to premature death and the permanent closure of the pool. Together they won the day and the Lido has remained open all year-round ever since.
Bob suffered a stroke in the 1990s, affecting his walking and speech. But his regular morning swim could go on, thanks to Doreen driving them both there and quietly helping him at the Lido every day at dawn. She was with him there on the day in May 2001 when he suffered his fatal heart attack, after his swim.
At the age of nearly 80, Doreen faced living on her own for the first time in her life. She was already a hard-working membership secretary, logging everyone’s details on index cards, but she now acquired a computer, signed up for lessons and learnt how to create and run a database. She brooked no nonsense from late payers or chivvy-ers who were invariably made to wait for their membership cards! She remained membership secretary for many years and in 2009 was honoured by the BBC Sports Personality of the Year programme as an Unsung Hero for her decades-long voluntary contribution to the SLSC. At a glitzy ceremony in Sheffield, she met many of the big names in the world of sport – Gary Lineker, Sue Barker and Freddie Flintoff amongst them. Their photos would later adorn Doreen’s much-prized trolley.
In 2012, she had another brush with celebrity when the Australian Olympic swimming champion Ian Thorpe – the Thorpedo – paid a visit to the Lido as part of a weekend of community visits by olympians. Doreen’s photo had been used in the advance publicity campaign with the caption: ‘Behind every sporting hero is a Doreen.’
The last 20 years of Doreen’s life could so easily have been lonely and isolated. But she faced her widowhood with courage and a determination to enjoy what remained of her life: she travelled abroad on holiday with her children and was also a regular at club social events, until quite recently joining in the dancing till late in the evening. Doreen contributed so much for so long to the SLSC and was a wonderful role model for how to live a long and worthwhile life.
Janet Smith
