Sam Perry, RIP

 Today, my family learned that a friend we'd never met in person passed away--despite the same last name, we're not quite sure where our lineages meet, with the obvious exception of Noah.  Sam Perry was born around the beginning of the second World War in Everton, just "up the hill" from Liverpool.  If you're a real football fan, that explains the logo of the Toffees, Everton's football club.  (Nil Satis Nisi Optimum, by the way)

Sam grew up in workingman's housing of the type that is memorialized in the movie Hobson's Choice, a row house on the hill that is Everton, and remembered putting pennies (and slugs) in a meter in the home to get some gas for light, walking out to the outdoor loo, bomb shelters to protect people from the Blitz, and the fact that despite it being a humble dwelling, it was home.  In the 1960s, the row houses were demolished to make room for 12 story flats, and just as any former resident of Cabrini Green, Pruitt-Igoe, or the Robert Taylor Homes would tell you, it just never quite became home.  Those displaced from the old row houses call themselves "The Lost Tribe of Everton".  

As a young man after the war, he did not make the cut for college track high school, and by a stroke of luck wandered into a tailor's shop, where he was told that if he could read and cipher better than the proprietor, he had a job.  He thus became a master "cutter", the man who cuts the fabric for the tailor who sews it together, and even developed college/trade school level programs for teaching this now mostly lost art to young people.

Sam had children of his own--I believe at least two sons and a daughter--and married twice, both times ending in divorce.  As we got to know him, we learned about his love for the history of Everton, especially the old "Iron Church" of Everton.  Sam could be found at the Iron Church, historical society meetings, at the Salvation Army in Liverpool, and at the White Star pub in Liverpool.  He is survived by his children and grandchildren, by a good friend Pam in Wales, and by his adopted children and grandchildren in Minnesota.  Rest in peace, Sam, and thank you for all the fun and memories--and the beautiful vests you helped us make.