22756 Charles Stanley RCAF My father George Gardner passed away in February of this year aged 80 years. For as long as I can remember he has talked about a Canadian airman who he became very good friends with during the second world war, namely Charles "Chuck" Stanley. During the war years my father was a coal miner and lived in Hetton le Hole in the heart of what then was the Durham coalfield, he had met Charles Stanley through a mutual aquaintance and they very quickly became good friends, Charles visited Hetton le Hole as often as he could and he was stationed at RAF Middleton St George. I understand that they lost contact with each other when Charles was posted elsewhere and it being war time there was not the modern resources available to keep the contact going. My father would talk quite regularly in the intervening
years about their friendship and he often wondered if he had survived the
war and what became of him. I did on many occasions offer to try and trace
Mr Stanley but my father always declined the offer......I think in reality
he did not want to face up to the fact that perhaps he had been killed in
action, and he wanted to preserve his good memories of him.
In January of this year I made a decision to try and find out what had
become of Mr Stanley, if he had survived the war and if he was still going
strong, however my father died in early February which effectively put a
stop to it, I have however decided in memory of my late father to try and
find Chuck Stanley or his relatives, my problem however is that I have very
little to go on and really don't know where to start.
All I know is that "Chuck" was stationed at Middleton St George during the
war years and hailed from Quebec ( I again sadly don't know if that is
Quebec City or some other town within the province of Quebec ), I am
therefore hoping that you can point me in the direction of somewhere where I
can actually start making progress.
Hoping you can help.
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