Peter Brown talks to Peter Sachs about local charity ‘Village Care’ and his extraordinary life so far.

Village Care is a practical yet modest charity that brings enormous credit to Penn and Tylers Green. For the past 25 years hundreds of people have given time and energy to assist those in the community in need of a helping hand. They have done this, without any fuss or proclamation, as volunteer drivers or duty telephonists to ensure that people unable to get about can keep hospital appointments, collect prescriptions or simply do a bit of shopping.

And for the past decade this quiet, unassuming charity has been chaired by a quiet unassuming man. Peter Sachs takes no credit for the continuing success of Village Care, handing that to the volunteers. “As an organisation it virtually runs itself. Any problems are solved by the volunteers themselves; they hardly ever come to me,” he says with satisfaction.

Peter’s “light touch” management skills however do not come by chance, but after a lifetime as a leading light in one of Britain’s cutting-edge industries.

He was born in Leeds in 1933 but within weeks his family moved to Berlin just as the Nazis were taking political control. The next five years were some of the most turbulent in Berlin’s history, but all he can remember is a “little thatched sweet shop near a railway station”, which is hardly surprising for a five year old.

Little did he know that more than 60 years later events linked to that period would reach an extraordinary climax.

However, safely back in Putney in 1938 (relatively safe, that is - his home was hit by two incendiary bombs during the war) – he attended King’s College, Wimbledon and then Shrewsbury School, one of Britain’s leading boarding schools where, he admits, the school ethos of public service left its imprint on him. He won a scholarship to Cambridge where he studied maths at St John’s College.

After university came National Service, and he was called up to the Navy where he found himself in Portsmouth on Britain’s last battleship, HMS Vanguard. It was an eventful time. He learned to navigate by star sighting and before long found himself involved in the Suez campaign – the ill fated invasion of Egypt in 1956 – navigating a minesweeper in the Mediterranean.

Then, not for the first time, Peter found himself as part of the team involved in developing secret, highly advanced technology...  the world’s first under-water sonar at the top-security naval establishment at Portland.

He started his first job with Marconi as a mechanical engineer, and once again was soon at a forefront of the 1960s technical revolution... this time as a project manager in radar and satellite communications, including the development of Skynet 2, Britain’s highly successful and innovative communications satellite, which helped pave the way for the satellite links we take for granted today.

By the early 1970s he was working for Rank Xerox making the world’s first quantity production fax machines, setting up the complex electronic assembly unit, and then returned to Marconi as a general manager. He topped his career when he was appointed director general of the Electronic Industries Association, representing at home and abroad what is still one of Britain’s major industries.

He retired at 60, but not for him a life of quiet retreat. He began a long and complex battle along with other family members to obtain restitution for an office building his family owned in the centre of Berlin that had been seized first by the Nazis and then by the East German authorities. After many years in which he had to display the quiet, dogged persistence that helped him in his career, he achieved a successful result.

Peter moved to the village and his lovely home in Manor Road shortly after he married his second wife Ann in 1982. They both had three children each from previous marriages so home life was often hectic (and still is when any of a dozen grandchildren pay a visit), but both are able to find tranquillity and challenge in their love of music.

Peter is an accomplished cellist, and plays in the Misbourne Orchestra, which he also chairs, while Ann is a long-standing member of the High Wycombe Choral Society.

His involvement in Village Care came from a direct invitation from the much-loved and much-missed Liz Wagstaff, a lady involved in many charitable causes in the village and a lady to whom it was nigh-impossible to say “no” to. Not that Peter wanted to say no. Village Care volunteers were already helping his mother-inlaw and he much admired the charity’s work. He soon involved himself and within a couple of years became chairman.

“It’s a wonderful charity with some wonderful people who just want to help,” he says. “We just grew and grew and reached a peak in 2004 when we had over 80 volunteer drivers and telephonists and covered 852 jobs. We are still very much in demand – last year we had 71 clients, 50 drivers and 21 telephonists, but we are always on the look-out for more volunteers.

“Even though fuel costs are rising steeply our drivers don’t claim mileage for short journeys, although we obviously recompense drivers for longer journeys to hospitals in Oxford or Hammersmith, for instance.”

Village Care still needs funds of course – telephone charges are one of its major outlays – and its biggest fund-raising event is the ever popular Open Gardens Day, taking place on this year on Sunday 12 June.

Instigated by the late Frank Coker, Open Gardens Day enables everyone to wander around the village on a suggested route looking at beautiful gardens specially prepared and opened up by generous residents. It’s a great way to explore the village, meet friends old and new, and stop for a cup of tea at Mary Coker’s own glorious garden.

Maps and tickets can be obtained from the village hall from 1.30pm on the day... You may even bump into Village Care’s chairman en route. Make sure you say hello; he’ll love to meet you.

This article was written by Peter Brown and first appeared in the June/July 2011 edition of Village Voice (issue 144). To see it in its original format please select the relevant edition from the Village Voice pages of this website.