Ivy Lloyd (left) from Liverpool with her Auntie Em and Uncle Matt, also from Liverpool.
Although our family only moved to Rhyl in 1955 both my father and mother had history in the town. In fact it was in Rhyl they met for the first time.
My mother, a Liverpool Welsh girl, would visit Rhyl with her parents, Harry and Celia Lloyd, and other family members in the 1930s.
Meanwhile my father, David Pierce, a Wrexham lad studying at the Liverpool School of Pharmacy, was helping out at a Rhyl pharmacy for the summer as were some of his fellow students at other local pharmacies. A chance of a seaside holiday combined with work experience.
During that summer the couple met and dated. When they were both back in Liverpool Ivy, 17, and David, 22, continued to meet and got engaged.
By October 1939 they were married and Ivy was back home with her parents, David was finishing his training as an army medic ready to join the British Expeditionary Force in France.
Except for a couple of weeks after Dunkirk they did not spend any time together as a married couple until the war ended in 1945.
David had been posted to the Middle East.
If it hadn’t been for that damned war I could have been five years older.
Robin's Nest 