Dawn had a love of history and a lasting passion for the history of the American Civil War. I'm not sure whether this came before or after seeing the  film, "Gone with the Wind" but I rather think it was before. She sympathised with the Southern rebel cause as the underdogs. She knew slavery was wrong and admired William Wilberforce's struggle to have it abolished in this country. Living as we have for some years now in Wisbech, we came across Wilberforce's associate Thomas Clarkson, onetime headmaster of Wisbech Grammar School.

Dawn avidly studied the American Civil War over many years and for this reason we thought it proper to be mindful of this and so we chose 'Amazing Grace' (written by a reformed slave-ship captain, John Newton) as the funeral hymn. The opening music was Pachelbel's canon in D (a favourite of Dawn's) and closed with 'Tara's Theme' from the film "Gone with the Wind".