HUMBERSTON Fitties' longest-serving resident has died.
Betty Card had a holiday chalet on the site for more than 65 years and was known to nearly every other resident on there in the last seven decades.
The 86-year-old died at Grimsby's Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital following a stroke.
Betty and late husband Jim had their first ever visit to The Fitties in the mid 1940s.
Unknown to Betty, Jim – a former Sheffield police constable – bought the bungalow at the most easterly end of The Fitties.
When they arrived for their first holiday there was no electricity or water, and they only had donkeys as alarm clocks.
But the "Sheffield lass" had holidayed on the park ever since.
When the Grimsby Telegraph spoke to her to mark her 80th birthday she said the Fitties was a special place.
She said: "It was a holiday away from it all.
"The Fitties is unique. There are more modern parks with up-to-date facilities, but the Fitties has got something special. It has not got commercialised. Coming from Sheffield we have all the commercialism we want, so when we come here it is a lovely feeling."
Caring neighbour Eileen Landsdown-Wilson said: "Betty always said that when she passed away she will be going to The Fitties in the sky.
"She loved the place and she loved her dogs. She called a lot of them Sally so we will be playing Gracie Fields' Sally at her funeral.
"Everyone knew Betty. When I first came here 20 years ago Betty and I struck up an immediate friendship as we were both from Sheffield.
"Everyone who went round to Betty and Jim's was always welcomed with a cup of tea. People who knew Betty will always remember her with a smile. She was the kindest lady you would ever want to meet."
She was also well-known for organising a party for the end of the six weeks school holidays when all the children went back home, and campaigned with fellow residents to prevent the sale of the Fitties, standing with protesters outside Cleethorpes Town Hall back in the late 1970s.
She well remembered life on the park in the 1940s, when running water and lighting seemed like a dream, and when donkeys woke residents at 6am with their braying. And their chalet still bore the tide marks of the 1953 East Coast floods in which more than 40 people died.
It was bought for £500, and now it is not unusual for chalets to fetch £90,000 on the market.
And that is not the only huge change Betty would have seen. Seventy years ago there were about 50 chalets, now there are about 350.
Jim died about 12 years ago and Betty scattered his ashes on the nearby beach.
She spent her last summer walking on that beach and looking back on the happy days living on The Fitties.
A funeral service will be held at 1pm on Monday at Grimsby Crematorium.
