Marlborough resident, Malcolm Lucas, is 100 today. He celebrated with a party for family, friends and neighbours at Marlborough Golf Club and entertained all his guests with a few tunes on the piano-accordion. Looking round the room at all his guests Malcolm told Marlborough.news, “I feel like a film star!” He attributes his long life to being a teetotaller, to luck, to his passion for music and to his family. His daughters would also add his inquisitive and enquiring mind, his sense of humour, his resilience, ability to adapt to change and his huge enthusiasm for life.
His daughter Lynne Cope has written the following account of her father’s remarkable life.
‘Malcolm Lucas was born on 4th September 1922, just a couple of months before the newly formed BBC broadcast its first radio programme. He grew up with his parents and two younger sisters in Bargoed, a thriving mining town in the Rhymney Valley, Wales. Despite the hardships of the 1930s, he had a happy childhood, enjoying school, especially reading, describing himself as a romantic child with a vivid imagination and an inquisitive mind, a trait he has retained throughout his life.
From an early age, Malcolm’s great passion was music. Influenced by his mother, a talented pianist, and by the Italian accordion music popular in the valleys at that time, he learnt to play the piano and accordion. Later, as a teenager, he took up the clarinet, inspired by listening to the swing bands of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller on the radio. Mainly self-taught, he has always read music but is also a natural in improvising and playing by ear.
Having developed an interest in the emerging field of electricity, Malcolm volunteered to join the RAF as an aircraft electrician in World War II. In October 1942 he embarked on a 2 month sea voyage to India, via Brazil and South Africa to evade German submarines, not knowing when he might see home again.
Malcolm was posted all around India for the next 4 years, enduring the tropical climate as much as the war itself, but with the occasional light relief of playing clarinet or piano with a band to entertain the troops. Despite countless inoculations, he caught dengue fever, sandfly fever, malaria, impetigo and most seriously, amoebic dysentery, which meant spending weeks in hospital, watching coffins go past his window; later he was told by his friends, “We didn’t think you’d pull through that one, Taff!”
Happily, he did pull through and arrived safely home in April 1946. Having missed out on higher education, as did many in that era, he gained qualifications through night school and a correspondence course, enabling him to become an Installations Inspector for the South Wales Electricity Board. Outside work, Malcolm enjoyed the freedom of his treasured Enfield motorbike and later on his Morris 8 car, while his passion for music continued to flourish.
In 1958 Malcolm met Margaret, the love of his life, and within 3 years they were married with 2 daughters, Karen and Lynne, living in Bargoed, close to their large extended family, where they stayed until 1998 when they moved to Marlborough to be closer to their daughters and grandchildren.
Malcolm and Margaret loved Marlborough and became fully involved in the community; they got to know many people through taking their grandchildren to Manton Pre-school and Preshute Primary. Mal volunteered as a pianist at the Jubilee Centre in town, where he acquired quite a fan club, playing all the old favourites. He also regularly dropped in to rehearsal sessions of the Marlborough Accordion Orchestra to listen, chat and sometimes join in.
Sadly, Margaret died in 2012 and Malcolm was bereft, but he continues to be a devoted father and grandfather. His independence is remarkable: walking, mowing his lawns, pruning trees, painting and fixing – though he was finally persuaded to give up his ladder climbing in his late 90s! He is still inquisitive, avidly following the news and reading, as well as keeping his mind sharp with maths problems. As he celebrates his 100th year, his amazing memory enables him to continue playing the piano wonderfully and to talk about the past in vivid detail.
A well-loved and sociable figure locally, Malcolm enjoys nothing more than a chat with friends and neighbours, or entertaining them with his accordion for the Golden Jubilee and VE celebration street parties. He has certainly embraced Marlborough as his home.’