Campaigning Greenock OAP reflects on her remarkable life

Ivy Siegfried, who was the secretary of Cowdenknowes Residents' Association for 25 years, is a well-known and popular figure in the area.

At the age of 86 she still does her bit for her neighbourhood and speaks up for people.

Ivy was bought up in Belville Street and she and her twin sister were the youngest of a family of nine.

Her family suffered tragedy soon after she was born, when their tenement was hit in the Blitz.

Ivy said: "Two of my siblings died in infancy and my brother Matt was a teenager when he was killed in the Blitz.

"My brother refused to go into the shelter that night. He said that there had been warnings three or four times that week and nothing had happened.

"That was the night we got hit.

"He was in the home guard and he was on watch at the other end of Belville Street and someone told him that his mother's block had been hit, he left his post and started to dig us out."

From there the family initially stayed at Ivy's gran's in Dunoon before being rehoused at Murray Street in Bow Farm.

She attended Lady Alice Primary and Finnart School and when she left she got a job in a drapers shop in Ann Street in Greenock then went to IBM.

Ivy met an American sailor at Cragburn who wanted her to get engaged and go back home with him to stay with his family in upstate New York.

She went over to the States as a housekeeper and the family paid for her flight, but it was to be a short-lived relationship.

Ivy said: "I thought it would be better not to be beholden to him or his family and I was right.

"He was the exact opposite to what he was like when he was here."

"After that I used to go out with a couple of Scottish girls and we met our husbands together."

Ivy married plumber Raymond Siegfried after a courtship of three years and become step-mum to his son and daughter.

She said: "We bought a house on Long Island with half an acre of land.

"The summers were very hot and I was homesick."

Three years after getting married she gave birth to son David and then a few years later daughter Vicky.

She was one of many local young women who went to America in the 1960s.

Ivy said: "A lot of girls went over after meeting sailors over here.

"I was shopping in Long Island one day and two girls came up to me and said 'Greenock?' and when I nodded they told me they were from the Port."

Sadly her marriage didn't last and after 13 years in the States she returned to Greenock in 1977 as a single mum with two young children.

Ivy stayed with her sister before renting a flat in Caddlehill Street.

Ivy said: "I cleaned stairs and people's houses to make ends meet and then went back to IBM, first in the stores and then on the assembly line."

"When I was a single mum it wasn't easy.

"I got free meals for the kids at school and child benefit but IBM was a good company to work for."

She stayed with the firm for 25 years until taking a deal to leave when she was 55.

By then she'd moved to Dunlop Street and it was after she retired that she caught the campaigning bug and helped to form the residents' association.

Ivy went on to spend more than 20 years fighting to improve the area for everyone.

She said: "The association was set up because of the heavy traffic coming down the road. It used to cause the houses to shake and things would fall off the walls. Some of us got together at a meeting in Notre Dame School and I was voted in as secretary."

Ivy ended up in the national limelight when her fight against pensioners having to pay for a TV Licence saw her appear on Good Morning Britain in 2020.

She defiantly told how she would rather go to jail than pay the fee.

The feisty senior citizen also survived being struck down with Covid last year. Ivy admits she feared the virus would kill her, the same as her twin sister Hazel the year before.

But she told doctors she wanted to survive to see her great-grandson, Archie, being born, which she did. He will turn two in February.

Ivy's children are now both in their fifties, with David living in Gourock with his partner Lynne, and Vicky in Falkirk her with partner Mark.

Her grandson Allan, David's son, followed in Ivy's footsteps by living in America and spent time working at several universities before going on to work with a multinational company. He is married to Erin and dad to Archie.

Ivy says that while life has been hard at times she has no real regrets and relished her years raising her family and being a campaigner.

She said: "I love being able to help people. I don't do it for me, I do it for everybody. I like to see people happy."