Isabel and Alfonso John Garscia
Alfonso John Garscia (or Garcia in some records) was born in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, USA on 20 November 1907. He was the son of Mary Garscia, though is father is not recorded. When he was four years old, in 1911, he moved with his mother to Warsaw, which was then under Russian rule. This may be why, in 1916, he formally registered as an American citizen with the US Consulate in Warsaw.
The circumstances or date of his arrival in England are as yet unknown. When he died on 13 September 1959 it was in the Manor Hospital, Nuneaton, although his address was 17 Kingston Street Derby. His death was, tragically, the result of a car accident just outside Nuneaton. He had been an electronics engineer.
Isabel (Betty) Redfern was born in Hayfield, Derbyshire, on 17 December 1915, the younger daughter of Percy Redfern and his wife Edith nee Redfern. Her father was a journalist/subeditor.
At the age of 24 in 1939 Isabel was working as a shorthand typist on the Kingston Bypass in Esher, Surrey. The following year she married Herbert Samuel Tison Bennett, an accountant, who was to live for only another nine years. The couple had a son, Oliver, who was born in 1943. When Herbert died on 29 August 1949 their address was the White Cottage, Newlands Corner near Guildford in Surrey.
Another nine years were to pass before Isabel married her second husband, Alfonso John Garscia, in early 1958. Tragically he, too, was to die young, in a car accident on13 September 1959.
Isabel lived a long life, and was an active member of the local branch of Amnesty International. She died just before her 99th birthday, on 3 December 2014, at home in Beverley Road, Leamington. Her funeral was held at Stoneleigh Church on the 17th.