LUCKY JIM LAWRENCE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12480, 14 October 1938, Page 2

LUCKY JIM LAWRENCE

RECOVERS FROM ACCIDENT In Hollywood, Mayfair, and St. Moritz they call Mr Walter Woollard Lawrence, 30-year-old son of Sir Walter Lawrence, of Hyde Hall, Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, “Lucky Jim.” He has toyed repeatedly with death in motor races, on the Cresta Run, and in the air since his youth, and now he is well on the way to almost complete recovery from the. injuries he received in the aeroplane crash in which his close friends Lord and Lady Plunket and their pilot lost their lives in February. His broken leg still in bandages, he said when interviewed at Hyde Hall that he hopes to compete again for his Cresta trophies next winter (if not this', and that he has not abandoned the idea of playing squash for the Bachelor Club again.

“As for the Cresta, Well, I hold two magnificent cups and I’m loath to let them go,” he said. “The crash has not destroyed my nerve. “I was lucky not to lose my leg, and I shall still be able to play games after a fashion.” To the magnificent Gft Sin man who is not only firstclass on the “bob” run, but a mainstay with bat and ball on his father’s private cricket ground and one of the fraternal triumvirate who successfully challenged any other three brothers in England to a squash match, this is of tremendous importance. But the accident had made a deep psychological impression on him. “There is only one thing for me to do at present—work,” he said. “The crash has affected my whole outlook and you won’t see me around the West End so much.’’

By work he means carrying out his duties as governing director of his father’s building firm in London. Perhaps “Jim” Lawrence’s most famous motoring exploit was racing the Blue Train from Calais to Cannes (7 20 miles-, and beating it by an hour.

His strength and endurance are terrific, and it is to this that he owes his life. His struggle to live astonished his doctors. “The consolation of the crash,” he concluded, “is that I made lots of new friends while I was recuperating in Hollywood, Douglas Fairbanks, jnr., and Norma Shearer were marvellously good to me.”