A woman who grew up in Perth, Scotland spent happy hours in her old age ‘revisiting’ the Fair City virtually from her home in California.
Caroline Dunsmore died recently, on November 23, 2021 aged 97, but one of the pastimes she enjoyed in later years was to go on a trip using Google Maps to see how her old home in Scotland was doing and to ‘visit’ familiar streets.
‘Carrie’ enjoyed a long life, including an important year which was spent translating for the British armed forces at Bletchley Park, home of the famous wartime code breakers.
Her son Frank Pipal got in touch with the PA to share the stories of Perth that kept her entertained in her infirmity.
“My mother loved Perth,” Frank told the PA. “I think if she had been forced to sum it up as a place in one word, it would be ‘couthie’.
“Given that trips home were no longer possible (even pre-Covid), we did quite a few ‘virtual tours’ with Google Street View these past years.
“Carrie died two months ago here in Kenwood, California, where as it turns out she lived twice as long as she did in Perth.
“She may have left, but Perth never left her. Latterly as she declined into the gentle kind of dementia, she spent more and more time there.
“And why not? The memories were good and her friends and family were all there as she remembered them.”
Carrie was born on March 1, 1924 to Buchanan and Elizabeth Dunsmore. Her family had a well-known Perth clothing shop, Dunsmore’s.
She was a pupil at Perth Academy in the 1930s. She loved sports, in particular riding, skating and tennis.
Then came the war and Carrie went up to Edinburgh to do an MA in modern languages.
On graduation she was recruited by Bletchley Park.
In 1946 she married a former US Navy man and later moved to America.
Her son Frank explained how Carrie loved to revisit her home city: “Old photos from then were always a hit, and once in a while we’d go for a ‘Street View drive’: into town, along the river and by the Inch, perhaps a keek at the golf course in satellite view to look for “the Dunsie” and always on up the hill to Comely Bank.
“Her trips to Perth were more or less annual while her mother was alive, but the last time she was actually in Perth on a visit was 1996, when she and my father did a 50th wedding anniversary tour of old haunts, friends and family.
“The shop, Dunsmore’s, was on the western corner of the High Street and St John’s Street. It was founded in 1837.
“It was a clothing shop for women, and the adjoining building, added later during my grandpa’s tenure, held the furrier’s department.”
Caroline had a secret life away from Perth during the war. Her languages degree saw her recruited by secret communication centre, Bletchley Park.
Frank noted: “Her job there was translation, but not as you might imagine. Whatever urgent information was in the Enigma decrypts, her job was to put them into good German.
“There were thousands of military terms, abbreviations and acronyms, which made it virtually unintelligible to anyone not in the Wehrmacht.
“We still have her paperback German military dictionary.
“Perth’s most well-known Bletchley-ite was Jean (Rooke) Valentine. Mum and her were born the same year, they knew one another from since they were wee, but we found out neither woman knew the other had been working at Bletchley Park.
“On May 7, 1945 they were all told: ‘It’s over - go home!’ and she got the night train to Perth - which at the time stopped at Bletchley.
“She arrived in Perth in the morning, stopped at a bakery and then walked up to Comely Bank to surprise her Daddy on his birthday - May 8, the first VE day.
“Her father Buchanan told her she couldn’t just expect to come to work at Dunsmore’s without first learning something of the draper’s trade.
“So he sent her off to work in sales at Debenhams in London.
“At a party she met George Pipal, a demobbed US Navy guy fresh in from the Pacific, who was in London working as a UP wire service reporter.
“Were it not for meeting this American charmer, Carrie Dunsmore might well have stayed in Perth and perhaps even brought a new generation’s ideas and style to the floors at Bucky Dunsmore’s.”
George and Carrie married in 1946 in Prague and lived here and there in Europe for a hectic couple of years, wherever George was sent.
Then they settled in the London suburbs and raised a daughter and three sons.
In 1966 the family moved from London to Connecticut.
In 1980 they came to Sonoma County, California and built the house in Kenwood where she stayed to the very end.
Amazingly, Carrie did not reveal what she’d been doing at Bletchley Park to anyone for a good part of her life.
“All had been sworn to secrecy and she never spoke of it to anyone,” explained Frank.
“In 1975 the veil was lifted by the publishing of Winterbotham’s book, The Ultra Secret. That’s when my American father - an intelligence officer in the Pacific war - found out his Scottish wife knew about Ultra, and when she found out that he too had known.”
More than 60 years later she was presented with an award, the Bletchley Park commemorative badge.
Celebrated for her “lively intelligence, loving character”, Caroline leaves four adult children, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
