They were lovely and pleasant in their lives.
Alan Edmond Catherall was the grandson of the woman who owned the Fish Hotel in Buttermere, Cumbria, England. Buttermere is on Lake Buttermere in the fabled Lake District of northwest England.
The Fish Hotel has changed ownership and name, currently Bridge Hotel. Alan was from the area but not the village of Buttermere, which is quite small. Perhaps he was well known there.
Alan was an RAF Aircraftman 2nd Class and a radio operator who was a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Java. He died there in October, 1943, at the age of 21.
I wonder about the comment on the plaque, “They were lovely and pleasant in their lives.”Somehow, that is not how I want to be remembered.
What would be on my plaque? “ he made a few mistakes and pissed a few people off but eventually got it together. All the while he had a life of high adventure.” I don’t expect to have a plaque, but what it said would depend on what part of my life the writer was in. What would your plaque say?
robertcdeming 
They were lovely and pleasant in their lives” expresses how others saw them and how they made others feel – more of a statement of their outward influence.
“he made a few mistakes and pissed a few people off but eventually got it together. All the while he had a life of high adventure.” Says more about an egotistical presence, about “me”.
That’s my take.
Kay Wischkaemper
kwischkawork@gmail.com
I’m thinking about what people might say after my passing. My first wife would say something very different from my second or Josette.
The young Alan died after more than a year of misery as a Japanese prisoner of war. Surely he was more than pleasant? I think his parents had the plaque made. Some men survived the camp; I wonder what they would have said? There is a true account of a similar POW camp in Burma called “Through the Valley of the Kwai.” I read it years ago.
thanks for the context Robert, am enjoying the trip posts
At Canterbury Cathedral, former archbishops are entombed with a stone effigy on top of the sepulcher. I always wonder what their real story was. That is a highly political post, and beginning at least with Thomas Becket, sometimes contentious.