In celebration of Wendi Harrison Kelly

Wendi

The celebration of Wendi's life yesterday was wonderful; she was a truly gifted and intelligent person and the place was literally packed to the rafters with friends and family. 

Now I'm back home, I've googled her and found this lovely piece of writing from 2002 that marked her retirement from Prospect, the Civil Service Union:

"WENDI Harrison started off with six courses and ended up with 36. That’s the measure of how she expanded the IPMS training programme during her 10 years as training and development officer.

Wendi retired in May (2002) as head of the recruitment, education and organisation unit in order to “smell the roses” and work as a freelance trainer. She leaves behind a programme that regularly attracts more than 500 Prospect representatives each year and is accredited through the Open University Validation Service for a certificate of higher education.

For her last three years at IPMS, Wendi also headed the union’s recruitment effort, a period which coincided with steady membership growth after years of decline.

Wendi came to IPCS as a negotiations officer in 1976, fresh from working in Coventry as a Unison rep. She looked after the nuclear pitch, the Home Office and the first privatised civil service body, The Radiochemical Centre, later to become Amersham International. She moved on to the agriculture pitch in 1980 where she campaigned hard against cutbacks in research and started the tradition of taking a union stand to the Royal Show.

After negotiating the number of units of redundancy in the Agricultural and Food Research Council down from 149 to 80, she moved again – this time to look after heritage and the research councils, followed by the Department of Transport and the Property Services Agency.

Wendi then did a spell as training officer for the Council of Civil Service Unions before returning to IPMS in 1992 and taking over the union’s training brief.

She said:“I’ve had a great time and loved every minute. Prospect representatives are wonderful people who give up their time and energy on behalf of colleagues. They made it all worthwhile and I shall miss them."