Meet the Mansfield volunteer who has collected clippings from the Chad for 40 years
A kindhearted Mansfield volunteer who has collected clippings from the Chad for exactly 40 years has shared her 10,000-item collection.
Yvette Price-Mear, 59, started training as a nurse at Harlow Wood Orthopaedic Hospital in January 1980 aged 19, and at the time began collecting clippings from the newspaper – usually whenever a big event happened or if she recognised a name.
In what started as a memory token for Yvette, she says she has noticed a huge change over the years – not just in the style of our newspaper, but in fashion styles across the decades.
Yvette says her collection is “fascinating” to look back on, and gives her the chance to remember big events as well as friends who have appeared in our newspaper.
She said: “Every Wednesday I cut out clippings about anyone I know and stick them in my tome.
“I keep clippings of tragedies in the Mansfield area, and the spots where they happened are now synonymous with me. I often walk past ‘hotspots’ and say a prayer for victims and their families.
“And my word I notice fashions; particularly from the 80’s when I started. The ‘fashion police’ would have a field day.”
Over 40 years Yvette has created 11 folders, each containing 120 sheets and each sheet averaging eight clippings each – with her husband calculating that she has collected more than 10,000 articles.
She says her collection is so important to her that she would even grab it if her house was on fire.
She added: “When I look back on them I’m reminded of memorable events in peoples’ lives, peoples’ triumphs and multiple obituaries. It’s absolutely fascinating to look back on.
“My husband estimates that I have patiently cut out and stuck in about 10,000 clippings over. Yes, I really ought to get a life.
“Many years ago I invited a friend to come around for a cuppa so we could look at school friends’ wedding photos.
“However, all of a sudden she caught sight of a ‘court report’ featuring her mum’s shoplifting spree! Whoops.”
Yvette estimates that, in her 40 years of collecting and volunteering, she has appeared in the Chad 266 times. Now we make that 267.