Vocational Talk - Margaret Nethery

Margaret Nethery gave her vocational talk to West Fife Rotary this week relating the highlights of the life she's led.

Margaret counts her family as her proudest achievement: two children and six grandchildren, all kind, adventurous, hard-working, and generous with their time in their communities. It's the thread running through everything else she has done.

Her working life began after a serious road accident derailed her education and left her relearning to walk. With no qualifications, she started as an office junior in a solicitors' firm, then took a job with a car transport company, where she found herself driving new cars onto transporters without a licence - experience that helped her sail through her driving test at 17.

From there she worked for musical director Louis Freeman, placing musicians in Glasgow's theatres and hotels. Freeman was still performing at 100 years old, and long after Margaret had left his employment, married, and moved abroad, he'd still ring up asking her to come back to work.

A stint as advertising manager at the original *Top Gear* motoring magazine - then a slim publication, decades before the TV show - brought her into contact with the Eurovision Song Contest, a Miss World seated beside her at a dinner, Emile Ford, and a sadly thin Billy Fury. Covering concerts for the company's local newspapers, with no training at all, she once interviewed Roy Orbison in the interval of a Glasgow show. He asked what she'd like to hear; she requested "Pretty Woman." He dedicated it to her from the stage. She still smiles every time she hears it.

A brief, unhappy spell as a hotel front-of-house manager confirmed hospitality wasn't for her, and she returned to what became her true calling: charity fundraising. At the Scottish SPCA she found work she loved, and over twelve years, helped build a small department that brought in £8 million a year on a budget of a million - work that won UK awards and remains one of her proudest achievements. She continued that at a children's charity and on discovering that retirement didn't suit her, last November she took a part-time charity role visiting elderly people - coffee, shopping, company. Training she'd been given, including the Heimlich manoeuvre, proved unexpectedly vital three weeks ago when a 93-year-old lady in her care began choking in a café. Margaret's quick action saved her.

Travel has been a constant passion. In her late teens, to her parents' horror, she answered a newspaper advert and set off for Marrakesh with sixteen strangers in a yellow minibus - returning home broke, sunburnt, and covered in beads, walking the last stretch from Govan due to having insufficient funds for the bus all the way home. More recently, travelling solo, she's visited Graceland and New Orleans (grateful for a phone tracker when she got lost), and, a couple of months ago, Argentina and Brazil, where watching Argentine tango dancers was a holiday treat - after her own three attempts at lessons ended in failure.

Volunteering runs throughout her life: Sunday school teacher, church elder, charity can-shaker, trustee for organisations including Crossroads, Abbeyfield Scotland, Rowan Alba, and Fife Young Carers. For years she's also helped meet and greet cruise ship passengers arriving at Rosyth and South Queensferry, guiding visitors to Dunfermline - a project started by fellow Rotarian Peter Wilson.

Her path back to Rotary came, fittingly, at a funeral, where West Fife rotarian Brian Mitchell encouraged her to return. She's been grateful for the warm welcome ever since, rarely missing a Tuesday night meeting.

From solicitors' offices to Roy Orbison, from Marrakesh to Rio, Margaret Nethery's story is one of resilience, curiosity, and a lifelong instinct to give back.

Vote of Thanks

PP Neil Spriddle proposed the club's vote of thanks. Fellow Rotarians and guests, I think, speaking for the Rotarians, I think it's one of the great pleasures when we get a vocational talk from one of our members. You normally learn, as you said, without being morbid like funerals, you learn things about people that you didn't know at all. I think we learned a lot tonight that we probably didn't know and it was a very well put together talk - family, holidays, charity work, and work, so it was very, very good.  I would like to just say, I think fellow members would agree with me that you've been a great asset joining us as a club. Very much Carnegie's loss is our gain.