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Photograph of Bill Gould

Bill Gould

Bill belongs to: Cullercoats Community Centre & Cullercoats RNLI

Bill was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. He served in the army in Germany, Sudan and Korea from 1950 to 1955. He came to live in North Shields in 1955, married and moved to Cullercoats in 1957. Bill helps with fundraising for the RNLI and maintains contact with retired RNLI crew.

Bill was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 1 March 2006. The interview took place at Cullercoats Community Centre and lasted 9 minutes and 55 seconds.

Photograph of Bill Gould
Photograph of Bill Gould

Getting involved with the RNLI

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"And I was hanging around the seafront and the boats all the time, and I started supporting the lifeboat with raffles"

And I was hanging around the seafront and the boats all the time, and I started supporting the lifeboat with raffles, and joined the offshore branch of the Lifeboat Association, and I started going down to the lifeboat house on a Sunday mornings- I didn’t actually go in because I had no business at the time, but I obviously knew all the crew and we got on talking.

And then one day the chairman said, “there’s a position coming up where the RNLI want to keep in touch with all retired members because as things stand, you get people doing 20, 30 years service in the lifeboat and when they come to retirement age for the lifeboat they just disappear, the odd ones stop as launching authorities and fixed shore crew and things like that.” And he said, “would you like to stop on, seeing as, and do this job, seeing as you know most of the people that’s hanging around?”

So I accepted the job and collected all the names and what have you, and sent them to Poole to the RNLI and they asked me to join the committee of the lifeboat so I could tell them what was going on in my side of things, and I, when they opened the shop down the bank, I started working in the shop on Sunday mornings, selling souvenirs and stuff for the lifeboat, to raise funds.

Bill has 8 memories in the memorynet:

This memory has these themes:
Community | Volunteering

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