Julie Bernadette Muir 1950 - 2008

Julie Muir has died. I was very upset when I heard.

Julie was equally well known to me as 'Jools' in the days when her surname was Hearn. I worked with her for a year in the late 1960s at Childwall Library in Liverpool and she was one of the kindest and most vivacious people I have ever known. I think I was a bit in love with her in those days - but then she was such a wonderful person it would have been hard not to have been. Any new member of staff was cared for in a way that never occurred to management. Julie would show them the ropes and generally make them feel very welcome. The readers also took to her and her easy manner.

Julie, pictured below in her red leather hot-pants in 1970, married a former schoolmate of mine who had also lodged very briefly in my flat in Leeds. I was pleased because although I didn't know him well what I did know of him was good. So far as I could tell Iain was worthy of her and it seemed a good match. Thirty eight years and two sons later I was obviously right. He has spent the last year as her full-time carer.


After qualifying in Librarianship in Manchester Julie worked for Hammersmith and Fulham where her Under 5's Sessions of music, stories, finger rhymes songs & instrument playing were renowned.

Julie and I lost touch for many years and then around the year 2000, out of the blue, she contacted me through Friends Re-united. Since then we've swapped Christmas greetings and news and the occasional e-mail but at no time did she tell me of the cancer she had first been diagnosed with in 1995. Nor did I know until her death that she had been a volunteer telephone counsellor for Breast Cancer Care.

It sounds as though the memorial service was lovely and it included, of course, Gerry Marsden’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” – Julie was an active and ardent Liverpool supporter. Indeed, everything she did she did ardently, with heart and soul.

I cannot begin to imagine the impact that Julie’s death has had on the lives of Iain, Dominic and Patrick. That Julie has been taken from them seems so unfair. I can only hope that as time goes on the happy memories from all those years with Julie overtake the bad ones that her illness and death may have left.