“The Life of Bran Vernon”:

Brian was born in 1935 such a long time ago and has seen a lot happen in the world.

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He was brought up in Hounslow and was a very active person as he was involved in the scouts and lots of other associations. At the tender age of 17.5 he joined up to the Royal Air Force where he travelled to many destinations and enjoyed his role in Human Resources.
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After 3 years, aged just a little over 20 he left the Royal Air Force to embark on a variety of careers with:
– Civil Service
– Post Office
– Gillett
– Edmundsons Electrical Wholesalers
– Del Monte Foods
– Nestle
– Erin which became Heinz
– Midland Bank (the listening bank!) – dressed in his smart suit, bowler hat and umbrella with the financial times tucked under his arm!

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Never one to be sitting down, Brian was always so active he managed to fit in a whole host of part time jobs such as a football referee, swimming which he loved (he swam for the RAF team and was flown all over the place to compete so he must have been quite good at it) and organising coach tours.

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In 1975 Brian joined American Express, the head office at the time was in Haywards Heath with the new HQ being built in Brighton. He went on to move in to this building (of course this is now no longer there – it is being demolished as we write this). He stayed with American Express until his retirement in 1993. Whilst there he was Supervisor and Manager of quite a few departments but the last job gave him so much satisfaction. He was the manager of the Youth Trainee Scheme (YTS) and looked after 50 school leavers and took them in to American Express to be trained, take a qualification with hopefully a view to getting a job at the end of it.

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There are 100’s of young people that owe their career to Brian and I know he was very proud and honoured to of helped them at the beginning of their careers. He later became the Chairman of the Pensioners for American Express.
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Family is very important to Brian and he married his wife Yvonne in 1968 and moved to Peacehaven. They bought a lovely little house and then went on to have two children Sharon and Paul and with addition of a lovely daughter in law and three wonderful grandchildren you would often find him in the conservatory reading a story to the children.

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Brian & Yvonne have lived here for 49 of Peacehaven’s 100 years existence!

Retirement did not bring any chance of slowing down for Brian it just meant he had more time to be involved in what he loved, below are just a few of the things he has been up to in his time:
– Deputy Mayor of Peacehaven
– Active councillor
– Member of Horticultural Society
– Reporter for Sussex Express for Peacehaven – The Parish Pump
– Chairman of the German Group for Peacehaven Twinning Association
– Advocate for MIND
– Belonged to the Peacehaven Creative Writing Group
– Helped to start CTLA (Community Transport Lewes Area) by getting funding from American Express and driving for free!
– Gave 102 pint of blood to help the NHS – he even received an award and decanter from the Chairman!
– He even taught himself how to use the internet and topped up his knowledge with community classes to make sure he kept up to date

As you can tell Brian was not someone to sit around and very much believed if you were having an off day that you should just get on with it and do something positive!