The iconic performer was born Vera Margaret Lynn in East Ham, in the London borough of Newham, on March 20, 1917, to Bertram Samuel Welch and Annie Martin.
She could recall performing as young as age seven. As a teenager and young performer, she came to prominence in the big band era of British music, leading up to World War II.
She sang with famed British band leaders Billy Cotton and Bert Ambrose, and regularly appeared on a BBC radio show of noted pianist Charlie Kunz.
Lynn vividly recalled celebrating her dad’s birthday in the family garden on Sept. 3, 1939, when they heard on the radio that Great Britain had entered the war.
“One of the first things I thought of: What was going to happen to entertainment?” Lynn recalled in the Imperial War Museum interview in 1988.
She soon found herself performing at every base and hospital around the British Isles and beyond.
“It soon became apparent that entertainment was going to be a necessity a weapon against … to keep morale up,” she said. She voiced a BBC radio show during the war, “Sincerely Yours” on Sunday nights when she’d sing songs and read letters from servicemen.
Lynn called herself an “unsophisticated” young lady from the East End — and the perfect messenger to connect with soldiers on the front.
“I was very similar to their sisters and their girlfriends. They thought I was one of them, on their social level and they could relate to me,” Lynn said. “I gave them news from home about a baby being born to Sgt. Jones or somebody other. I’d go visit the wives take some flowers and talk about it on another programme.”
She received one of her nation’s highest honors in 1975 when Queen Elizabeth II made Lynn a Dame Commander of the British Empire.
Lynn’s husband of 57 years, saxophonist and clarinetist Harry Lewis, preceded her in death in 1998. The two had met when Lewis was playing for Bert Ambrose & His Orchestra. They are survived by a daughter, Virginia Lewis-Jones, who was born in 1946.
Lynn remained active well into her senior years and in September 2009 became the oldest person, at age 92, to be No. 1 on the British album charts with “We’ll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn.”
In an interview with The Associated Press that month, Lynn said it’s in the British DNA to keep a stiff upper lip and make the best of even the most dire circumstances.
“I suppose for the older people like myself, we can remember the times when we couldn’t get this or we couldn’t get that … it’s something that doesn’t bother us,” she said.
“Because we coped then and this is how people have got to cope today. And they will cope. We’ve always coped no matter what the odds were.”
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Image Source:*nbcnews.com
Source:nbcnews.com
