By David Barker
My mother, then Elizabeth Maynard, started her working life at Lebus as a shorthand typist late 1940, having taken a secretarial course on leaving school in 1939. Her parents, Alf and Ada Maynard ran a cafe opposite the factory in Tottenham and my mother told me that during the war, the management of Lebus ate lunch in the dining room of the flat above the cafe. Once, when she stayed late to type up her “secret” Home Guard meeting minutes, Herman Lebus found her and insisted that she could type her minutes during the normal working day.
During the war my mother worked in the department that ordered spare parts for aircraft that had been damaged and could not fly. I presume those were parts for wooden aircraft (possibly the de Havilland Mosquito) and were a priority. She had to liaise those orders and kept a Kardex card system of the parts and their progress. I also recall that she mentioned gliders – Horsa centre section comes to my mind and she had something to do with those too. Those memories are from conversations she had with me many years ago but I think I have recalled them accurately.
The photograph below is the youngest I have of my mother; it was taken when she was about 30 years old and she would look different in that to how she looked when she started at Lebus at the age of 17 or so.
Elizabeth Maynard
Horsa glider