GORDON Stanton is photographed here during the 1948/49 soccer season with fellow members of High Park Juniors football team.
Yet his appearance in today’s LookBack is certainly not the first time that Gordon has made the pages of the Southport Visiter.
Back in May 1942, the Stanton family – including then eight-year- old Gordon – made the front page, featured in a story headlined: “Southport Fire Drama: Family Trapped in Burning House�.
Our report told how the blaze began in the downstairs living room of the Stantons’ Hart Street home.
The sleeping family – also including mother Lily Stanton, Gordon’s three siblings and father-in-law Harry Stanton – awoke abruptly and called for help.
Gordon’s 13-year-old brother Derek also managed to escape the home and rouse the next-door neighbour.
The police then arrived and rescued the entire family using a ladder – except 70-year-old Mr Stanton.
Our report continued: “It was thought that Mr Harry Stanton was trapped, but Sgt W O’Keeffe, a constable and a leading fireman in the National Fire Service, managed to get him out after searching for him and finding him in a bedroom, dazed with smoke and with slight burns.
“He was taken to Hart Street police station and given first aid.
“Two NFS crews dealt speedily with the fire. The living room, however, was practically burned out.�
Mrs Stanton – whose husband was serving in the Middle East – later explained she had been awoken by the crash of falling pictures, and thought her home had been struck by a German bomb.
She said: “My daughters, Gladys and Jean, should have gone to work next morning, but had no clothes to go in.
“The Women’s Voluntary Services came to our aid helping us with the provision of clothing.�
Gracing the same front page as the Stantons’ blaze escape was a particularly murky court case concerning an apologetic bigamist.
The Southport man had deceived his second wife by claiming he was a bachelor, when in fact he was still married to the woman he had left in 1935.
His appeal from jail against his three year sentence was quashed as he was not able to justify his actions.
High Park Juniors football team, 1948-9 season. Back row, from left: R Mentha, H Kitchen, B Fairhurst, R Sumner, D Henderson, R Holdcroft. Front row, from left: Gordon Stanton, George (surname unknown), A Ratcliffe, R Andrews
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