Century celebrations for local care home resident

Robert Jones joined the Royal Navy at 17 he was moved into a new task force called Beach Commandos. He began training in Scotland before going to North Africa on the Warwick Castle (ship) to train for the forthcoming beach landings in Normandy. He was then part of the unit that landed on Sword Beach in the early hours of 6 June 1944.

His job was to get everyone off the landing craft and help casualties so that the beach Could be cleared. His unit carried on to Caen where he remained for 6 weeks before returning to UK. In.

He was demobbed in 1946 and returned home to London and he joined the Post office as a Postman where he worked until retirement in 1989. He is part of a large family with 9 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren and has been part of the blind Veterans Association for over 15 years and been living on Hayling Island for longer than he can remember and loves to be by the seaside so when moving into Wimborne a few years ago he loved that he can continue his seaside trips and pub visits. Bob loves being out and about meeting new people and specifically always loved a garden centre.

Everyone at Wimborne and his family decided for him to jump on the minibus and head to our local garden centre to celebrate his big 100th birthday, with the biggest balloon in hand as we walked around everyone, we met stopped to wish this hero well on his landmark birthday. After being stopped by many people and enjoying visits from his family and friends we headed back to Wimborne to enjoy celebrations with a special sparkly homemade cake from our head chef and open the telegram from the King in which he personally met earlier in the year

Sarah Peach General Manager of Barchester Wimborne added: “We’re delighted to be celebrating a truly remarkable man as he reaches this amazing milestone. Bob is such a popular resident who always has an interesting tale to tell, and we look forward to hearing many more as he breaks into his next century.”

Wimborne care home is run by Barchester Healthcare, one of the UK’s largest care providers, which is committed to delivering personalised care across its care homes and hospitals Wimborne provides residential care and dementia care residents from respite care to long-term stays.