Sheila Richmond
Hello! I’m Sheila, a Reader here for fourteen years and a member of St Peter’s Church all my life. As a family we were closely involved in church services and social activities. I was especially interested in the music, but as a girl I couldn’t join the all-male choir. However, aged fourteen I was asked to play for the newly-formed Children’s Church, and did so until I went to College, where I learned to play the organ; when I came home I was able to deputise for successive organists.
I taught English, Music, and sometimes RE in various schools around Birmingham, not always living at home except in the holidays. I also qualified as a school librarian, sang in the City of Birmingham Choir and the Birmingham Eastern Orthodox Fellowship Choir, and in St Peter’s Choir when I was at home. Eventually I came back to Sutton, and in 1981 I married Michael and decided to give up teaching, except for some supply work, which gave me time to become more closely involved in church life, including being on the PCC and Deanery and Diocesan Synods, secretary of the Church Fellowship, and training the choir for four years. After my husband died in 2002 our then Vicar asked me to consider training as a Reader, and I was licensed in January 2006. My stepson, Jonathan, with his wife and two children, lives in North Wales.