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Camden New Journal - by DAN CARRIER
Published: 17 May 2007

Mayor Dawn Semper and former mayor Jill Fraser with Royal Logistics Corps officers

Hundreds pay tribute to former councillor
at funeral

THE life of veteran Labour councillor Jim Turner was celebrated on Friday by 650 mourners who packed St Dominics Church in Gospel Oak.
Mr Turner, who died suddenly two weeks ago of a heart attack, aged 76, was Camden’s mayor in 1991 and had worked for the Town Hall’s housing department as a resident caretaker.
Mourners included friends and neighbours from the Regent’s Park estate where he lived. Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson read the Rudyard Kipling poem If. Other party friends included former leader of the council, Dame Jane Roberts, and a host of former mayors and current councillors.
Officers from the Royal Logistics Corps, based at the Regent’s Park Barracks next to Mr Turner’s home, formed a guard of honour. He was a regular at a social club in the barracks’ mess.
Tributes were led by Camden’s director of housing Neil Litherland. He recalled how he first met Mr Turner in 1995 when he started his job and Mr Turner, knowing Mr Litherland had left his family in Manchester to move south, did his best to make him feel at home.
Mr Litherland said: “The first papers he handed me were not case work – they were some historical walks he’d devised using his knowledge from his time as a cabbie.
“Before wishing me good luck and pledging his help, Jim slipped in that the district manager for his area, Sharon Calvey – a local girl – was extremely good at her job.”
Sharon, Mr Litherland would later discover, was Mr Turner’s only daughter.
Glyndbourne opera singer Liz Franklin-Kitchen sang a selection of hymns, while priest Father Leo Edgar said mass.
Mr Turner’s daughter Sharon said: “I want to say thank you to everyone who came. I’d like to say thankyou to the soldiers who formed the guard of honour, to Father Leo Edgar. The support our family have been given at this difficult time has been very much appreciated.”

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