The death has taken place in the UK of 90-year-old Anthony Kilmister CBE, who regularly attended ceremonies in Clifden to commemorate the first non-stop Atlantic fliers, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown.
Anthony’s family were close friends of Swansea neighbours, Arthur Whitten Brown and his Irish wife, Kathleen Kennedy. He remembered; ‘Arthur was a very refined and quietly-spoken man. One would never think that he was the first to fly the Atlantic – and in an open-cockpit Vickers Vimy! My parents lunched with them every Saturday.
‘Arthur was better known to me as ‘Uncle Teddy. As his only son, Arthur Junior had been shot down in the war in 1944, he lavished a lot of attention on me. As well as attending my School Days, he always gave me a present for my July birthday, which was a day before his.’
Anthony’s final visit to Clifden was with his wife Christine for the 2019 centenary of Alcock and Brown’s Atlantic flight.
PHOTO: Left to right, Tony Alcock, nephew of John Alcock, author Brendan Lynch, and the late Tony Kilmister pictured in Clifden 2019.
A review of the book, ‘Yesterday We Were In America’, published in 2019 was carried on the FlyingInIreland website and can be seen here.
