Olive Elsie Leech
Olive Elsie Leech (1921 – 2023) was born on 7th June 1921 the first child of John and Elsie Dainton. Growing up in North Islington, London, Olive had to take care of her younger siblings, Ken, Albert, Jack and the twins Stanley and Edith as their mother was often unwell. With the start of World War 2 and the blitz, the family were evacuated to Cambridge where Olive studied and qualified as a teacher. She became a secretary in the Physics Department at the University of Cambridge where she met John Leech. Olive and John were married in Cambridge in 1943. After WW2 ended they moved to Brentwood, Essex where their sons Rod (1949) and Owen (1951) were born. John’s academic career in 1958 took the family to live initially in Ottawa, Canada and subsequently in 1968 to Waterloo, Canada. They finally returned to the UK in 1986 to live in Oxford so they could see their grandchildren Tom and Jack. Olive became a great-grandmother to Erin and Theo. After John’s death in 2004 Olive moved to Richie Court in Oxford, then as her health deteriorated, to Bathampton Manor in Bath and finally to Greystones. Olive had a life-long passion for the theatre and was an excellent reciter of poetry and speeches. Her other interests included singing, painting, playing Bridge and Scrabble.
