Faye Waring was born in 1925, the second of four children of a furniture maker and grew up in Essex and on the Sussex coast. She left school at 15 because of the blitz, took evening classes and matriculated with credit, then trained in educational psychology at the Maudsley and Bethlem Hospitals, she worked with disturbed teenagers at a time when funding was generous and case-loads small, facilitating effective therapy.
She married Leslie Brahams in 1950 and moved to Norwich. After some time with the Child Guidance Clinic she left to join Leslie in his business in Great Yarmouth. They bought a failing department store and renamed it Brahams; when it prospered they opened similar fashion and furniture stores in Ipswich and Colchester and finally Tuttles in Lowestoft. Their business had a reputation for excellent staff training and for caring for their employees, some of whom they helped to set up business on their own. They focused on running their business well rather than on making profit their first priority.
When her husband retired and sold up 1980 Faye opened Brahams Fashions in Great Yarmouth with he fashion buyer Margaret King, who had started in their store as a junior and still runs the business today. Leslie died in 1987 and Faye retired in 1996.
Throughout her time in Great Yarmouth she was active in local causes. She ran charity fashion shows at the stores and a farewell show in ST. Nicholas Church, which raised over £900 for restoration work. She was on the management committee of Burlington House for mentally handicapped adults until 1990; co-founder of Great Yarmouth Samaritans and a volunteer for Yarmouth Mercury’s talking newspaper for the blind, as an editor and reader.
Though not religious, she treasured her Jewish roots and deeply valued the companionship and solidarity of the Norwich Jewish Congregation. She also valued people of whatever persuasion and was a generous giver and receiver of love and friendship. She enjoyed her extended family and a wide circle of friends and continued to maintain an active social life despite kidney failure and dialysis, until restricted by the frailty of her last year or so. She spent her last ten years with widower, Dr. Roy Vining, who survives he.
Roy Vining