A BRECON resident who has died aged 93 has been described as “part of the history” of the town.
John Ottewell, who lived in Llanfaes, was a well-known figure in the town and even appeared on the iconic BBC children’s television programme Blue Peter in the 1960s with presenter Valerie Singleton.
John had been invited to the studios with his adopted hare, Hoppity, who he used to feed from a bottle and was even pictured bathing with in the Daily Mirror newspaper.
As well as appearances in the national media John was, until later years, a regular contributor to The Brecon & Radnor Express, often submitting letters and calling into the Bulwark offices with suggested news items which included artefacts he’d found while metal detecting.
Daughter Cherilyn Vaughan said: “He’s had a brilliant innings and we’ll all remember Dad as he was a character and a half. Someone said in one of the cards, ‘he wasn’t just a character of Brecon he was part of the history of Brecon’.”
Brecon-born and bred John, who was also dad to Susan, George and Calvin, was a grandfather, a great grandfather and great, great, great grandfather with more than 30 grand or great granchdildren. He died, after a short illness, at Nevill Hall Hospital last Thursday, March 28.
His wife Marie had died in September last year, also aged 93, and a month later, the couple who met in 1950 when John worked as a bus conductor in Pontypool, would have celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary.
The couple received a card from the Queen to mark their diamond wedding anniversary in 2010 and at the time John said: “We met on the buses.
“Marie and her sisters were passengers. I’d seen her on the bus before and I just made a date with her, we went to Newport. That was the end of September and we married at the end of October.”
John had served with the 53rd Welsh Division of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers during World War II, having signed up as a 17-year-old in 1943, and helped liberate the Dutch city of S-Hertogenbosch in October 1944.
Following the war John began working on the ‘red and white’ Western Welsh buses in 1947 and Cherilyn said he took the opportunity to boost his income at the same time.
“He used to sell vegetables on the top rack of the bus out of the garden, and he wasn’t meant to do that.
“When we lived in Gilwern he pinched a ladder from a guy when he was up on a roof, painted it, and sold it back to him. I wouldn’t say he wasn’t right but he was a bit of something.”
In 1955, shortly after Cherilyn was born, the family moved to Canada, and for a shorter period Las Vegas in the United States, but returned to John’s hometown after seven years.
“We emigrated and everybody was doing it at the time but they just missed Brecon,” said Cherilyn who said her father had a passion for the countryside and fishing.
“He fell off the wall fishing by the Bull’s Head and the fire brigade had to come and get him out of the river and all he had was a couple of scratches. They took him up to the hospital to see if he was alright and he gave the fish to the doctor.
“The fire brigade passed me and they said he is alright and he’s still got the fish. When I was a widow at 20, with three kids, he taught me to fish. He said fetch your coat we’ll get you a rod and some wellies, from Hutchinson’s which was by the bridge, and he took me fishing at night.
“I caught five fish that night and he wouldn’t come off the river until he’d caught six.
“He said ‘do you think I’m letting you tell your mother you caught more than me?’ We were there until three in the morning. He cooked a brown trout for my mother at 3am.
“He went to a fancy dress at the 24th Club and he went with a big salmon in his bag and was dripping blood all over the dance floor.”
In 1969, shortly before the opening of the new Brecon Library in Ship Street, John and Hoppity discovered an unexploded bomb on the banks of the Honndu and the Usk.
“He carried it over to a policeman who said ‘what am I supposed to do with this?’ and Dad said ‘I don’t know but it hasn’t gone off yet’.”
It was thought the mortar bomb had washed down from the Army ranges.
Recalling the incident John said: “The policeman John Thomas told me ‘If this goes off you’ll be hearing more about it,’ and I said ‘but not from you John’.”
Hoppity also led to John’s invitation to the Blue Peter studio: “That was with Valerie Singleton and they were feeding Hoppity with bottled milk.
“He also had a badger he used to take around town and get drunk with him.”
John created books featuring his companion Hoppity and he would sell them and many of his paintings to support local good causes and he supplied every primary school in the town with a large colouring set.
He also published two books of poetry and the last, in 2006, ‘A Cry from the Heart’ was based on his experiences during the war.
He used the proceeds to provide a bench, outside the Lloyds Bank on High Street, dedicated to the memory of servicemen and women and it is recognised as a war memorial by the Imperial War Museum.
Cherilyn said her father would also fund events for veterans and he also met Prince Charles in recognition of his fundraising activities.
John also insisted he had the original idea for the television sitcom Dad’s Army but said the idea had been rejected by the BBC.
In 2009 John also took on the might of Brecon’s public school Christ College when it sought permission to close a public footpath running through its grounds.
The then 84-year-old said: “It has been a public footpath for the best part of a thousand years. It was there long before Christ College and is a symbol of rural freedom.
“Once you start closing public footpaths others will jump on the bandwagon and there will be nowhere for us to walk in the countryside, this is the thin end of the wedge.”
Despite John’s efforts a planning inspector, who met with him in Brecon, accepted the school’s request.
John’s funeral will be at the Llwydcoed Crematorium, Aberdare, on Friday, April 12 at 3.45pm followed by a wake at the Brecon Workmen’s Club.
Donations can be made in John’s memory to the Wales Air Ambulance.