A minute’s silence was held at Aberdeen’s Old Machar branch of Legion Scotland for member Barbara Milne, who has died aged 86.
The former businesswoman who ran a shop at Beach Boulevard was remembered during a bingo night, a game she loved to play.
Barbara and husband John took over the grocer’s shop in 1982, expanded it to sell newspapers and had developed it into a mini-supermarket by the time they gave it up in the mid 1990s.
The couple had been a business partnership since the 1950s when, as teenagers, they ran the upstairs lounge at the Ye Olde Frigate bar in Netherkirkgate.
John’s parents, Isabella and Peter Milne ran the bar for many years. Peter died in 1947 and his wife in 1958.
When John was 18 and Barbara was 17 they were asked to run the lounge which gave them experience in the hospitality trade.
The Frigate, a bar favoured by Aberdeen Journals reporters based at Broad Street, was run by John’s brothers, Eddie and Fred until the mid 1960s.
Barbara Milne was born in Young Street, Aberdeen, in December 1936 to ship painter Andrew Caldwell and his wife Annie, who worked at the Consolidated Pneumatic Tool at Tullos.
She was educated at Victoria Road School, Torry, before joining envelop makers Pirie and Appleton, Bridge Street, in the self-seal department.
When she was 16, she met her future husband, John, at the Abergeldie dance hall in Holborn Street.
Marriage and family
They married at Victoria Church, Torry, in 1956 and went on to have two of a family; John in 1960 and Philip in 1963.
John was a engineer in the merchant navy but gave up in the mid 1960s to take an engineering job at CTP before progressing into sales and marketing.
As the boys grew up, Barbara took a job in a shop but was also asked to help out with catering at a hotel in Ellon Road and at Royal Aberdeen Golf Club.
This work brought her into contact with senior management at Hall Russell and Barbara was asked to provide lunchtime catering for the firm’s directors.
She also had spells with Cowe’s grocers in Bridge of Don and as an assistant postmistress at St Machar.
When a former council-owned bookshop at Beach Boulevard became available to rent in 1982, the couple went into business on their own account.
It became popular as a local grocery store, newsagent and later small supermarket and at weekends, attracted football supporters heading to Pittodrie and families going to the beach.
Around 1993/94 Barbara and John gave up the business and Barbara began work as a special needs school assistant and then a cleaner at Sterling furniture store in Bridge of Don.
John said: “Barbara never stopped. She loved her time with the grandchildren and later the great-grandchildren. Barbara also loved playing bingo, cards, crosswords, badminton and joined the Bannatyne gym in later life and loved roller skating in her younger years.
“She was out walking every day at 6am. When the family was younger we used to holiday in Ballater and in recent years we had foreign trips to Mallorca, Cyprus, Italy and Turkey.”
You can read the family’s announcement here.
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