Adolf and Mary Mirecki nee Coulbourn
Adolf Mirecki was born on 17 April 1909 in Berdychiv, Ukraine, a predominantly Jewish town which suffered greatly at the hands of the Soviets in 1920 and was "liquidated" by the Nazis in the 1940s. At the age of 14, Adolf had left for Austria to become an artist, and before the Second World War he owned a furniture store in Hamburg. Because of his roots, however, he was forced to flee, reportedly holding on to the under-carriage of a train. As refugees to England and living in London at the outbreak of war, he and his Austrian wife Hilde were briefly interned as "enemy aliens", before being declared exempt.
He and a Jewish friend called Fink set up a business called Tubular Furnishings, off the Foleshill Road in Coventry, making pots and pans. He later set up business in Bayton Road, Exhall, making bicycle stands but the business became better known, between 1953 and 1957, for folding prams and pushchairs under the name "Shuresta". He married Mary Catherine Winifred Colbourn in Birmingham in December 1952. He and Mary had three children: Michael Benjamin, born in 1954, Anna Maria, born in 1955 (both were christened on 25 March 1956 in Stoneleigh) and Daniel, born in 1956. Later the family lived at Stivichall Croft before moving to Northumberland Road in Leamington.
He died aged 57 in January 1967, his hugely successful business having been bought out in the early 1960s by the Lines Brothers - makers of Tri-ang Toys.
Mary Catherine Winifred Coulbourn was born on 18 May 1923, the daughter of Dorridge dentist William Henry Joseph Coulbourn and his wife Alice Kathleen nee Lawless. She remained living with her parents on Chester Road Birmingham until her marriage in 1952. Widowed young, she later moved to live in Alveston near Stratford, but was living in Guildford, Surrey, when she died on 26 July 2017, aged 94.