Growing up in a Welsh coal mining town in the 1950s, Glyn Price learned to fix things.
Winter freezes burst the lead pipes on sewage systems. As a teenager, Glyn fixed them for his neighbors. He went on to become an engineer and eventually ended up in the Village of Hillsborough, where his concern for his neighbors continued.
“It winds me up,” he says, using a Welsh expression for “getting angry” to describe his feelings when Villagers pay out large sums for simple household repairs, or even larger contracts that are bungled.
To help, he started the Do It Yourself Club, where Villagers get together to learn how to make simple, inexpensive fixes.
“We’re here to save people money,” Glyn says.
The Club meets on the third Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m. at the Bradenton Recreation Center. Membership is free.
“We’re not contractors,” Glyn points out.
The DIYers are people who help out – members teach others how to do simple DIY repairs like changing the seal in a toilet tank that’s running, replacing a torn window screen, changing the air filters or maintaining an irrigation system.
“A plumber will charge as much as $100 for the service call and labor to change a toilet tank seal,” Glyn says. “You can do it yourself for a couple of bucks and five minutes of your time. We teach you how.”
Glyn also is involved with The Villages Welsh-American Club, which recently held its annual St. David’s Day Dinner featuring traditional leek soup and roast lamb. The club is open to anyone with Welsh heritage and features various events, including speakers and parties. Meetings are at the Laurel Manor Recreation Center on the second Tuesday of each month at 4 p.m.
Connie Pryce’s route to The Villages was slightly different. Growing up in Clearwater was about sunshine, beaches and the water, she recalls. She married young, lived in Germany and in various locations with her then- husband, who was in the military. After the divorce, she was on the lookout for a new job.
“A girlfriend from Germany in the State Department sent me a note with a job ad: ‘Any interest? Love Joan,’” Connie says. “So, I signed up and joined the Foreign Service.”
Her work as an embassy office manager took her to many places, including her favorite, Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, just after the Dayton Accords were signed late in 1995.
“When we got there the place was decimated,” she says. “The people had been nailed down by snipers and they were starving. But they knew the Americans would come, they just didn’t know when. If you were American, you were practically next to God. They were so appreciative and so thankful that we had rescued them.”
Connie was on 12-month posting rotations, so she had moved on to London, England – with a couple of postings in Baghdad in-between – by the time she met Glyn on a dating site. They corresponded by phone and on Skype. Glyn visited her in London but that didn’t last long. Connie went off to her third Baghdad posting in 2012.
“We’d settle down and have a chat on Skype every night around 10 o’clock,” Glyn relates. “Then I’d hear in the background ‘Incoming! Incoming!’ and she couldn’t talk.”
“I’d have to move away from the windows,” Connie says.
On a previous Baghdad posting in 2009, she was near a truck-bomb explosion.
“I was just going into a building when it went off. Just about annihilated the foreign ministry building,” she says. “I knew it was something huge and awful.”
For Christmas 2012, the couple met for a vacation in India. Glyn proposed over tea cups of beer.
“I brought several bottles of beer to the dining room for dinner, but the waiter hustled it away because they didn’t have a liquor license,” he explained. “Then he came back with two tea cups, saucers and a tea pot full of beer. When we finished one pot, I’d lay it in its side and they’d bring another. That’s when I turned to her and said, ‘Marry me!’”
Connie retired in the summer of 2013 and they went looking for a place to settle down, ending up in The Villages.
Growing up in Wales was very different than in America.
“We lived in a street called Long Row, 37 tiny houses,” Glyn says. “Everyone knew everyone and they were all ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles,’ even if we weren’t related. We played in the street and the doors were never locked.”
Glyn’s father worked in the mines before World War II, served in the military and lost two fingers in battle. After the war, he became a “fitter” – a mechanic working on excavation equipment. His mother worked various jobs, including time in a cigar factory, to help support Glyn and his two younger sisters.
While he was a miner, the family lived pay packet to pay packet and virtually all of his father’s earnings went to pay for groceries. After becoming a fitter and getting a pay increase, his father paid off the grocer (he believed the grocer was charging higher prices to those on credit) and never shopped there again.
When Glyn chose to attend the nearby technical high school, the family struggled to get the uniform for him.
“On an autumn Sunday before the first day, my mother decided I should get dressed to make sure I had everything,” he says. “They couldn’t afford long trousers so I had short ones. But then I needed a satchel to carry my books in and we didn’t have one. So, I was sent around to my auntie’s and she gave me a little old suitcase.”
He continued to carry the suitcase well into the winter. Then his mother went into the city to buy a new winter coat.
“When she came home, she didn’t have a coat; she had a new leather satchel for me,” Glyn says. “So, I used to say that I carried her new coat to school on my shoulder every day.”
John W Prince is a writer and Villages resident. For more information visit www.GoMyStory.com.
