THE funeral of a “true son of Shoebury” will take place tomorrow afternoon.

Albert George Jenkins, known widely as Alby, was born in June 1920 in the Garrison families’ hospital, now the Garrison Arms pub restaurant.

He went to the original, now vacant, Hinguar Street School, a redbrick building dating from Victorian times and due soon to be part of a major new homes development.

And when, aged 14, Alby started work, it was at the family firm’s original motor garage and bicycle and motorcycle sales and repairs building then next to the historic Shoeburyness Hotel.

Alby – or Uncle Albert as many knew him – and his business partners, his nephews Ken, Malcolm and Fred, moved to a new site and new building opposite Shoebury station in 1966. It was known as F.C.Jenkins Ltd. And over the next 35 years, until competition in the form of self-service filling stations flooded the motoring market, they built a huge family of regular customers and friends.

In those years, as older motorists still recall with considerable nostalgia, garage owners and attendants automatically checked a car’s tyre pressures, engine oil level, radiator water – and, yes, usually wielded cloth to wipe the front and rear windows.

Alby, a lifelong devotee of Southend United, not only served generations of customers at the forecourt. He also did wartime service in the RAF Regiment in Germany and the Far East.

He saw the tiny and remote Shoebury Village become part of Southend in the early 1930s, its enormous growth and the demise of its world-renowned Garrison.

Many who knew him will join the farewell to a true local legend and character at Southend Crematorium Wednesday afternoon.