Tony

From North Atlantic watch to a safe harbour: Tony’s next great adventure 

After seven decades of marriage, family life and globe-trotting work, Tony has found companionship, peace of mind and fun at Broadleaf House.

The early years

Born in Solihull in May 1938, Tony’s early years were shaped by the Second World War. His father died during the conflict’s first year, so Tony and his mother moved into his grandmother’s home in Hall Green, Birmingham. “We grew up during the war, with bombs, air-raid shelters, dust falling from the ceilings. It was intense,” he recalls. When Tony was nine his mother remarried, and the family settled in Kings Heath.

Navigating the high seas

At fifteen Tony met Sheila, the girl who would become his wife of 70 years. A year later he left school to join HMS Conway as a cadet in the Royal Navy Reserve and Merchant Navy.

Training relied on sextants, star sights and seven-figure log tables. “We had no radar in those days,” he says. By 20 he was standing solo watch in the North Atlantic, but the glamour wore thin: “I could drink a bottle of gin, grab two hours’ sleep and be back on watch at 4 a.m.… hardly healthy.”

After five years, deteriorating eyesight forced him ashore. Back in Birmingham, he received two job offers from chartered quantity-surveying practices and chose the one promising overseas work. “Within eighteen months of joining, I was travelling abroad. That was unusual back in 1959 – you didn’t just jet off everywhere like today.”

Building a global career

After six years of working and saving (“Every penny went toward our deposit”), Tony and Sheila married in 1963 and welcomed a daughter in 1966 and a son in 1967.

Quantity surveying in the late 1950s and 1960s was brisk, technical and occasionally hairraising. Tony inspected the runway lights at RAF Akrotiri, measured cable by the mile and once watched a Vulcan bomber skim the bonnet of his colleague’s Volkswagen.

Back home he worked on Britain’s vast naturalgas conversion, marching 34 miles of 36inch pipeline through snowy Leicestershire fields. “It was one of the worst winters on record,” Tony remembers. “We spread hay bales under bulldozer tracks just to get traction.” That project catapulted the firm onto the international stage.

Over the next twenty years Tony opened offices or advised on sites in Sudan, Iran, the Gulf, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Barbados and the United States. His adventures ranged from refuelling a sixseater plane on a makeshift aluminium strip in the Sudanese desert to hiding flat in a taxi during the Iranian Revolution, travelling 650 miles to Tehran to catch the last flight out. By 25 he was an FRICS chartered surveyor, by 40 a partner, and at 55 he retired “comfortably early”.

Love, loss & resilience

While Tony worked abroad, Sheila ran the home front, founded local netball leagues, coached primary school children and hosted England players. “Right up until a few years before she passed, she was tutoring netball for girls aged seven to 11. Sheila passed away at 86, but she was tutoring when she was 82 or 83. She was an amazing woman.”

Tragedy struck in 2022 when their daughter Jacquelyn died unexpectedly, followed 14 months later by Sheila. “Losing both of them within 14 months was incredibly hard,” Tony reflects. “I knew my wife was ill and I knew Jacqueline was unwell, but my daughter’s death was very sudden.”

“It’s not easy. Your wife isn’t just your wife after seventy years; she’s also your best friend. Eventually I realised I was lonely and made myself go out. I had a few restaurants I’d go to once a week, just to have something to look forward to.”

Deciding to move

The couple had already swapped a house for a luxury apartment in Solihull when Sheila first became ill and couldn’t manage the stairs. “That’s the one I’m selling now. It wasn’t a retirement community, just a high-spec apartment with two en-suite bathrooms, three bedrooms, an office, a 33-foot lounge, beautiful gardens.”

The decision to move was prompted by a health scare in 2024, when Tony drank too much water one evening, woke at 4 a.m with a blinding headache and deteriorated rapidly. “I became obsessed with staying hydrated. On this occasion, I drank a pint of water before bed and woke up around 4am with a terrible headache. It got worse and I found myself unable to work a phone. I could recognise it as a phone but had no idea how to use it,” he recalls. “Eventually I got through to Tania, my son Mark’s wife; Mark and Tania raced through rushhour traffic then the ambulance took another 90 minutes. By then I was out of it. I woke up three days later in hospital.”

“After that, Mark said, Look, when Mum was here, you could look after each other. But now, if you slipped in the bathroom no one would know for days. So that’s the reason why I moved – to be closer to Mark and Tania. The added bonus here is having a member of the management team onsite 24 hours a day. That gives Mark and Tania peace of mind too.”

The search for a community

“I knew this would be my last move,” Tony says. “I needed somewhere with community. Somewhere where I could be alone if I wanted to be or go and have a coffee with people if I fancied it.”

Tony began touring retirement communities: “Nothing felt quite right,” he says. A fellow viewer mentioned a new Adlington Retirement Living community on Birmingham Road.

The moment Tony stepped inside Broadleaf House he felt at home. “Bright, spotless, modern, and from a construction man’s eye, built properly,” he says. Being an early purchaser meant first pick of the apartments. “I chose a southfacing apartment overlooking the landscaped gardens.”

Although Tony had downsized in the past, Adlington transformed this move by engaging and funding The Senior Move Partnership to manage the practical details, from charity collections to liaising with the removal team. It ran so smoothly that even Tony, a veteran project manager, was impressed. “Rachel anticipated questions I hadn’t thought to ask,” he notes.

Although the sale of his old apartment fell through, he simply moved first and completed later.

Feeling at home straight away

Within a fortnight of his move to Broadleaf House in April 2025, Tony felt the difference. A brief return to the old Solihull apartment confirmed the change: “I realised just how happy I am here. The ambience of the place is just fantastic. I’m using the word ‘ambience’ in its widest context. I’m not just talking about the aesthetics; it’s the atmosphere that people generate.

“The staff are just wonderful. You can tell that the people who’ve been selected to work here want to support and care and listen. I think they’re all interested in people. They have to be able to listen to a lot of old people when they ramble on about this, that and the other, but actually if you take the time to listen, they have a lot of interesting experiences and things to share.

Friendship arrived quickly. Most days he and fellow homeowner Rob enjoy soup-and-sandwich lunches in the restaurant or tea and cake on Rob’s patio with Toby the dog; they also sample Sutton Coldfield’s eateries. “I’ve palled up with Rob. We’ve got similar outlooks on life.” Tony still drives to Solihull weekly to see the golf-club crowd and, after an upcoming back operation, hopes to play again.

Activities fill the calendar: a chairbased exercise class that proved tougher than expected, Wednesday cinema outings, a neighbour-organised theatre trip and a busy homeowners’ WhatsApp group.

Advice for wouldbe movers

Tony’s starting point would be three simple questions: “I would ask: Why do you want to move into a retirement community? Have you been to visit some other retirement communities in Sutton Coldfield? Have you found anywhere better? And that generally hits home.”

His own answers came quickly once he saw Broadleaf House. “The beauty of this place is you can do exactly what you feel. If you want to walk around the garden, sit in the breeze house, you can just do whatever you want to.”

That freedom extends beyond the community itself. Next week he will fly to Jersey with his son and family, returning to the hotel he first used when his firm opened an island office. Because the team at Broadleaf House are on-site around-the-clock, he can simply “lock the door, walk out and not worry about the security of his home.” On his return, a scheduled back operation, more golf and perhaps a regular quiz team are also on the horizon.

“Here I have friends on tap if I want them, privacy when I don’t, staff who genuinely care, and no gardening or home maintenance.” For an old sailor whose journey once depended on stars, that feels like safe harbour.