Vera Patricia Cadel Barnett was born, as she liked to joke, the weakling, not expected to survive past early childhood and, with her keen sense of humour, she delighted in the fact that she proved them all wrong.

She died, aged 89, two months short of her 90th birthday, appropriately on St David’s Day, March 1, at Marlborough Lodge care home, in Marlborough, where she received excellent care.

Unusually, she was known by a number of Christian names, depending on the area of country you were in.

In Cardiff, where she was born on April 22, 1924, she was known as Vera.

Orphaned in childhood, losing her mum to TB and father to the mustard gas injuries he sustained in the First World War, she was adopted by her aunt and uncle who already had children Tommy, Phyllis and Joan.

The family was close but it was with Joan, her husband Bill and their four children, Joanna, Jill, Penny and Chris, that a strong, lifelong bond was formed.

She trained as a typist but, with the Second World War raging, she joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service – the WRENs – at the age of 18, serving at naval bases across the West Country and ending in Barry, South Wales, where she met her future husband, Captain Bernard Claude Cadel.

He wasn’t keen on the name Vera, so when he took his bride across the Bristol Channel to Surrey she became known as Pat, her second name. They had a good life, with children David and Annie, whom they adopted from birth in the late 1950s, and adored.

Bernard built up a successful plumbing merchants’ business with his brother ‘Podge’ and sister Muriel, even supplying the copper tubing for Buckingham Palace. Happiness was not to last, however, as in 1962 Bernard died of a heart attack.

In the late 1960s, Pat and her children returned to Cardiff, where she once again became known as Vera and lived close to Joan, with both of them taking up the family tradition of golf, becoming stalwarts of the Creigiau club, and enjoying many good times with their children.

In 1983 there was to be another change of name, to Tricia.

Bernard’s friend from Whitgift School in Croydon, Paul Barnett, who had lost his own wife Pat to motor neurone disease. Paul asked her to join forces for companionship and, on marriage, she moved to his home in Bridport, Dorset, adopting the name Tricia to avoid any confusion with his first wife.

They enjoyed more than 25 years together, fundraising for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, sharing a love of Paul’s magnificent garden, church activities, their joint extended families and, for Pat, golf.

On Paul’s death in 2006, she decided to move closer to daughter Annie and her husband Julian and her grandchildren Rebecca and Joel in Marlborough – first at Merlin Court care home and then at Marlborough Lodge. Even towards the end, when dementia had taken its toll, Pat still loved to hear the latest news about her grandchildren, and enjoyed that David, still living on the outskirts of Cardiff, maintained the Welsh connection.

There will be a private family cremation tomorrow at West Wiltshire Crematorium, Semington, followed by a service of thanksgiving at St Mary’s Church, Marlborough at noon. Donations in her memory can be made to the Marlborough Lodge Residents’ Amenities Fund through Dianne Mackinder funeral service, Wagon Yard, Marlborough, SN8 1LH.