Tributes paid to Ryedale folk dancer (From Gazette & Herald)
Get in touch: send your photos, videos, news & views by texting YOGAZ to 80360 or send an email»
Tributes paid to Ryedale folk dancer Anne Trueman, who has died aged 92
8:46am Wednesday 13th March 2013 in News
By Kate Liptrot, kate.liptrot@thepress.co.uk
Anne Trueman, who has died at 92
TRIBUTES have been paid to a popular Ryedale folk dancer who told a friend she had enjoyed a “wonderful life”.
Anne Trueman – president, caller and musician of the Ryedale Folk Dance Club – has died a month before her 93rd birthday, leaving a son, daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Mrs Trueman, of Birdsall, near Malton, is credited with teaching folk dance to“innumerable” adults and children in Ryedale.
Terry Sugden, chairman of Ryedale Folk Dance Club, said: “As she said to Jim Shanks, fellow band member and friend of 40 years on the night before she died, ‘I’ve had a wonderful life’.
“Anne was a very special lady who was never happier than when at the piano, from rags to Playford dances, through music hall and sing-along, her music would light up any room.
“She was well known in the folk dance world and will leave a void which will be impossible to fill.”
Mrs Trueman had a passion for music and founded the Ryedale Folk Dance Club in the early 1970s, leading dances and classes. She last played music for the club on New Year’s Eve, when she played for more than three hours on her own.
Mrs Trueman was born in Boosbeck, near Saltburn, in 1920.
Leaving home in 1934, she went into service on Lord Middleton’s Birdsall Estate. She often told stories of when the complete house decamped to northern Scotland for the shooting and London for the “season”.
Marrying her husband, Geoff, in 1940, the couple had a son, Geoff – known to everybody as Slim – and later a daughter, Hazel.
They settled in Birdsall, where Geoff took over the post office before Mrs Trueman became postmistress and ran it until the age of 78.
During this time she continued to play in several dance bands, including The Martlets.
In 1989, she accompanied children of Wigginton School as they displayed dances for the Duchess of York in the Museum Gardens.
When her husband passed away in the mid-1980s, Mrs Trueman bought a VW camper van and travelled the country with the Camping and Caravanning Club in the folk dance and song section.
