It is estimated that over the course of nearly five decades, Violet Christie taught thousands in the Dunfermline area to drive.
She was owner of Christie’s School of Motoring which she launched with a Mini and ended her 45-year-old career with the new version of the British classic.
Violet, who has died aged 85, operated the driving school for 45 years until she was well into her 70s.
Many of her weekends were taken up teaching equestrian skills at Barberfield riding school at Craigrothie.
International curler
Violet was also an accomplished curler who played at Kinross and Kirkcaldy and toured abroad with the Scotland senior side.
She was born at Otterburn, Northumberland, where her father, Robert Brown, was an equestrian groom at the military training ground. Here earliest years were spent there together with her mother, Euphemia, and her brother and sister.
The family then moved to Lindores in Fife where Robert secured a position as a groom and Euphemia looked after the estate house.
Over the years, the family made a number of moves across north-east Fife and Violet was educated at Bell Baxter High School in Cupar.
She met her future husband, David Christie, who worked on the land, and the couple married at Dunbog Church in 1967 and went on to have one son, Sandy, in 1968.
After their marriage, David joined Fife Constabulary and was posted to Kennoway where the family lived for three or four years.
The next move was to Dunfermline where David was a dog handler and Violet began work as a driving instructor with Meldrums in the city.
Business career
After a couple of years she founded Christie’s School of Motoring with distinctive yellow Minis and an equally distinctive registration plate: V111 LET.
After his retiral from the police, David worked with his wife for a spell before he took on the lease of Knockhill racing circuit where he ran a motorcycle racing team. Their son, Sandy, went on to become Scottish 600cc champion and British 1000cc endurance champion.
Weekends at Knockhill were a family affair with David running the circuit, Sandy racing and Violet operating the catering vans.
Sandy said: “It would be fair to estimate that my mother taught thousands of people in the area to drive. When I went to the funeral directors the people I spoke to had been taught by her and the same when I registered her death.”
You can read the family’s announcement here.
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