Published 20th July 2024

Sadly, Val Ward, a long-standing and active member of Cardiff u3a passed away last week. She will be remembered most recently for her lively contributions to both the ‘Prose and Poetry’ and ‘Literature through the Ages’ groups where she regularly brought a smile to our faces with humorous rhymes recited from memory and societal context for the books we read. We will miss her.

Val’s Funeral will be on Thursday 1st August. For more information contact groups@cardiffu3a.org.uk.

Thoughts from some members who knew Val:

Val particularly enjoyed Literature when the leader, Margaret Pengelly, encouraged us to consider what was happening elsewhere in the UK and the wider world, and the probable effect on the author’s work we were studying. Val would often be at the forefront of any discussion on a poet’s work and I recall one of her illustrated talks on R S Thomas which compared his poems with those of other authors.
Val remained optimistically cheerful despite all the operations and ills she endured. She could be endearingly eccentric, as when she rushed out of the house bearing aloft a jar of jam hoping for a passerby to open it for her.
Two weeks before she died I rang her to find she was hastily getting ready to go to a concert at the Pavilion, despite recovering from a broken wrist. Later she was to attend a book reading. She said she was looking forward to coming back to U3A in the autumn. Unfortunately that was not to be. Val will be so much missed. 

                                                                                                                            Brenda James

I will miss Val in “Prose and Poetry” for her constant cheerfulness and her wide and interesting knowledge of literature.                                                                  Madeleine Webb

I  recall Val’s input at the February meeting this year, when she did a memorable reading of R.S.Thomas’s  “2 shirts on a line”.

She will be missed.                                                                                                               Dave Foxley

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