Sheila was born in Barnet on the 22ndSeptember 1943. She was the only child of Agnes Healey – her father died shortly before she was born. It was wartime, of course, and life was hard for her and her mother for many years.
She went to school in Whitton and if they ever managed a family holiday they would go down to Southsea on the train. There are lots of photos of Sheila and her Mum with sailors!

When she left school she started doing secretarial work for an insurance company. She married and had their only child Dawn.

Once single she set up home again in a ground floor flat in Alan Turing’s old house in Church Street in Hampton. She was a good homemaker and she took on whatever jobs were needed to make ends meet, including taking ‘phone calls in a taxi office and going out cleaning. Dawn remembers them spending lots of time riding bikes in Bushy Park together.

Eight years later they moved to their very own house in Orpwood Close, where they stayed for the next 30 years. She remarried around 1983. Dawn remembers him as being good fun and when Sheila developed spinal problems he took care of her.

Sheila always loved animals – there were budgies, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, snakes (which escaped) - and she began keeping dogs at this time, beginning with a spaniel, Whisky, whose portrait still adorns the wall today. He is there together with numerous pictures of tigers, her favourite animal. Dawn noted that there were lots of animals but no picture of her daughter!

Dawn would help her to indulge her other great love, music, by taking her to her favourite bands and especially on Mother’s Day. There was Gary Numan, Roxy Music, Frankie Valli, The Moody Blues, Alice Cooper, Il Divo, Erasure, Pink Floyd – though she sent her to Westlife with a friend.

As a mother she expected good behaviour from her daughter. On one celebrated occasion, when she found Dawn’s room hadn’t been cleaned in a while, she wrote ‘bollocks” in the dust on her TV screen, which gave them both a good laugh.

Dawn’s lifelong friend Sarah reports that it is due to Sheila that they had seen the entire run of The Twilight Zone, Tales of the Unexpected and Hammer House of Horror by the time they were 10 years old.

Her physical problems prevented her from working for many years but she faced it all with considerable bravery. If she couldn’t work she would devote her time to the people round her. She took no account of people’s ages and would enjoy an evening of karaoke with Dawn’s friends. Her door was open to anyone to discuss their problems and she was capable of giving wise, pragmatic advice. And her laugh - a ‘hearty, dirty laugh - could be heard down the street.

When she died she died with the flat full of friends and greatly loved by everyone there.