Hello and thank you for visiting ourpetrem (
http://www.ourpetrem.com ) the World’s number one online remembrance
and memorial site.
My name is Charles Haskell and I am the Managing Director.
I wanted to give you an idea of the thinking behind the site and also to show
you some of the ways it can be used.
If you have recently suffered bereavement please accept my
sincere condolences and I hope this page and especially the
site are of use to you.
If you are about to put a tribute on to a loved one and are not sure what to
write, it might be worthwhile looking at some of the other pages for inspiration
or help.
Bereavement is such a personal thing and what is right for
one person needn’t be the same for another.
It may be that you want to use the main site or our chat forum to remember
family from the past so that you have a record for genealogical purposes………….
However, lets start from the beginning………
I was born in 1952 at Hertford just north of London. My father was Dr Gordon
Haskell and he worked for the John Innes Plant Research Institute at Bayford.
When I was 5 we moved to Invergowrie near Dundee, Scotland where Dad became
Head of Genetics at the nearby Scottish Crop Research Institute.
At school I loved history especially the stories from Scottish history. William
Wallace (Braveheart), Robert the Bruce, Rob Roy and battles such as Bannockburn
or Culloden.
Aged 12 we moved south again and Dad became Head of Biology
at Portsmouth Polytechnic. It is now Portsmouth University.
Life is strange isn’t it? In Scotland I was regarded as the English boy
and down in Portsmouth with my Scottish accent I was thought of as Scottish.
Indeed for the first year of school in Portsmouth my nickname was “Haggis”.
I don’t answer to that anymore and my accent has all but disappeared.
I suffered my first bereavement aged 14 in 1967 when my Dad died suddenly.
He was only 47. It was a school exam week in June and suddenly life became
very surreal.
Dr Gordon Haskell (click
here)
With help from my best pal at school, Bob Larcombe and from
supportive teachers, I actually saw the busy week out without
crying. However on the quiet Saturday afternoon, alone in the
house, whilst watching wrestling of all things, on our black
and white television, the realisation of what had happened
dawned on me and I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk with
Dad anymore.
I must have cried solidly for between 2 and 3 hours all on
my own. It was then I learnt just how personal bereavement
is. To me, even now, everything is pre 1967 or post 1967.
The years passed and my love of history grew. I loved Napoleonic history and
still have a good collection of small 25mm painted toy soldiers.
I went to work in Banking, firstly for an Australian Bank ( ANZ ) in Marble
Arch, London and then Lloyds Bank ( now Lloyds TSB ).
However I didn’t really like working in a Bank so I started a side-line,
tracing family trees. This was before the Internet and Web sites and was quite
a lot harder to do then.
One day I thought it about time I did my own family tree.
So I asked Grandma to tell me about the family. One of the
first things she told me was that she had had a brother who
was killed in WW1. His name was Edward Aubrey Jackson and he
was a rifleman with the Kings Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC) when
he died on the 3rd September 1916 aged 21. He died at about
5.30 am when his battalion attacked on the Somme, France near
the village of Beaumont- Hamel.
I became interested in the study of WW1 and the more I read
about it the deeper my interest grew. One day a friend offered
to drive me out to the Somme. All we thought we would see would
be fields and grass. However we were amazed at the sights that
greeted us. Trenches, cemeteries, battlefield - debris and
French farmhouses with friendly farmers happy to show us their
collections of artefacts.
We came back, told our friends and soon were driving them
out for a look. Then following an article in a local paper
(The Portsmouth News) about me taping conversations with surviving
veterans, we started taking out groups in minibuses then coach-loads.
So my history tour business grew and Past to Present Historic
Tours Ltd was born.
Whilst viewing the various cemeteries, I would read the visitors
comments in the books of remembrance and a lot of the sentiments
and comments to the fallen stayed in my mind.
Eventually when the Internet was set up, I thought it might
be a good idea to have a Remembrance site. However our site
is open to all, not just for those lost in war. And that, as
they say, was the easy bit!
I have a business colleague and friend, Mr Michael McGovern.
We spent over a year contacting friends, relatives and organisations around
the World asking what they wanted from a memorial site. Also how much should
we charge. The replies indicated that the site had to be dignified and flexible
and that a voluntary fee of £10 or its equivalent would be fair.
We designed the site (many times) and decided to charge only a small, voluntary, fee payable
in 1 of 6 currencies.
We also decided that part of the fee would go to charity.
The site opened several years ago and has grown steadily since. It is now the
world’s number one remembrance and memorial site.
We believe the site is both dignified and flexible and judging from the comments
we have received from around the world, so do many people.
Somebody recently said that this site is a modern equivalent
to a cemetery. You make the choice whether to go in or not.
Once in you can read the tributes and memories in the same
way that you would read headstones in a cemetery.
The only difference is that we have the ability to have more details. Also
because the site is so flexible memories can be added to through the years.
On our home page you can click the “ view all” button to see an
alphabetical list of the tributes or you can put a surname into our search
box.
Please feel free to use the “contact us” button at the top of the
home page to let us know what you think.
Also contact us if there is any charity, hospice or any organisation that would
like a reciprocal link to us or perhaps to be considered for our drop down
menu for donations.
We are usually happy to add reciprocal links to other relevant web sites in
the hope it will be of mutual help.
Over the years ahead we plan to enhance the site and offer additional services
so please continue to view www.relrem.com .
If you know anyone who has been bereaved please let them know we exist, in
case it is of help to them.
Well, that’s about all.
I hope that this is of interest and help to you and gives you an idea of our
thinking.
Also if you have lost a loved one I hope that as the years pass you, your family
and friends will get some comfort from the use of this site.
Thank you for reading this and all best wishes from my team and myself.
Charles Haskell,
Managing Director, Relatives Remembered, Portsmouth. 2005
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