My wife, Mary Mitchell, who has died aged 70 after a stroke, was a housewife who had a great capacity to overcome the troubles life threw at her.
She was born in Leeds, the first child of Sylvia (nee Binney) and Bob Pickering, who were both architects, and was brought up in Preston, Lancashire. After attending Penwortham girls’ grammar school, she lived and worked in Swansea for a short time as a laboratory assistant before parting with her first husband and returning to Preston, where she met my friend, Geoffrey Pape. They married in 1978.
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