The city man who wouldn't be beaten

Crippled by a bone disease since boyhood and only able to walk with extreme difficulty and discomfort, Don, now aged 71, has never let his severe disability cramp his style nor limit his range of activities.

He should really have spent his life in a wheelchair but threw off this mode of mobility after only two years at the age of 12, telling his parents: "I'm going to beat this - I'm going to walk."

And a crowning moment for Don came six years ago, when he walked along the aisles at a Buckingham Palace Investiture to be presented with an MBE by the Queen, who had awarded him this honour "for services to the community".

He was a cub-master in St John's for several years and was one of the first Rover Scouts on Worcester's Westside.

For nearly 50 years, he worked for Frank Beach, who had a bakery in Sebright Avenue, plus two shops - one in St John's and the other in London Road.

Don will be particularly remembered by generations of boys at Worcester Royal Grammar School where he manned the outdoor "tuck shop" in the playground every morning between the 1950s and 1970s, selling doughnuts, lardy cakes, iced buns and other confectionery delights.

For the past 20 years, Don has been a very familiar figure at the County Ground as a life member of Worcestershire CCC. He is frequently to be seen on the outfield, camera in hand, taking photographs of home and visiting cricketers and "snapping" action scenes. He is an accomplished photographer and a long-time member of the Worcestershire Camera Club.

Don's grandparents kept a greengrocery shop in The Shambles for many years and were friends to other long-established traders in that busy street including the Pratleys, Thompsons, Edens and Smiths.

Don's parents, the late Walter and Elsie Baker spent their married lives in St John's, Walter working for 28 years at Meco and being in charge, for a time, of the factory's machine room.

Don was born in 1930 and, at the age of five, developed a disease which left him with a bone marrow deficiency and made him susceptible to fractures. These, he went on to suffer in several boyhood falls and, alas, the broken legs could not be properly set in those days, hence the deformity of the limbs he has endured ever since.

Because of his immobility, he had to be educated at home, with a teacher coming in to give him lessons, and at 10, his parents provided him with a wheelchair, though after two years, he refused to use it any more.

"I said to myself, I'll never let anything beat me. I'm always going to do it! I was determined to walk and get around - and this I did, despite the struggle."

Don's first job in his teens was helping out at the Vernon Park Stores in St John's, but then came his lengthy working partnership with Frank Beach, starting at his bread and cakes shop, Andora on the west side of St John's, near the church.

Beach's Bakery was in Sebright Avenue, and the firm later acquired a second shop - in London Road, where Don also worked periodically.

Among Don's most enduring memories are the happy years when, "come rain, hail or sunshine," he would man the "tuck shop" which Frank Beach set up on trestle tables each mid-morning in the playground of the Royal Grammar School.

"Our jam doughnuts, lardy cakes and buns were so popular that queues of schoolboys built up as soon as we got out the trestle tables. We would serve the milk monitors first so that they could then supervise the waiting boys and ensure nobody tried to jump the queue.

"We would sell at least 150 cakes within 20 minutes," recalls Don.

Among the RGS pupils in those days was Imran Khan, who went on to be a famous international cricketer, playing for Worcestershire and Sussex, before becoming captain of the Pakistan Test team.

"He was regularly to be seen in our tuck shop queues and, once in later years when he came back to the County Ground, he asked me 'Where can I get those lovely jam doughnuts like I used to have?' Former Worcestershire captain Tim Curtis was another of our RGS tuck shop customers."

Don says that Beach's customers in general were always anxious to buy the bakery's "piping hot" bread and, one Christmas Eve, Beach's sold no fewer than 1,000 loaves.

As for the community spirit which gained him the MBE, Don says: "I've always tried to help people."

The Rover Scout crew he started in St John's during the 1960s was such a success that 15 of its members still meet each year for a re-union at the Star Hotel in Foregate Street - a get-together that has now being going on for about 20 years.

"We've had some great times," recalls Don.

Cricket has also been brought untold enjoyment to Don since the day when, as a teenager, he first joined Worcestershire CCC as a member in 1947. He has now been a life member of the club since 1981.

For several seasons, Don sat on deckchairs with his parents on a spectator area of the County Ground now covered by the hospitality marquee, but his permanent place for some years since then has been in a different part of the Members' Enclosure. The seat which has become virtually his own is on the end of the front row immediately alongside the stairway to the players' dressing-rooms - an ideal spot to capture those photographs of the cricketers going on and off the field of play.

Don's photography has produced a significant pictorial record of cricketers and of scenes of Worcester in times past. Down the years he has also regularly been asked to take photographs of the casts performing in productions of the Worcester Operatic and Dramatic Society.

From time to time too, Don has also given exhibitions of his photographs plus occasional slide shows.

Long may he go on being a stalwart of the County Ground scene!