Sarah Handley – now Professor Dame Sarah Cowley – was born prematurely, leaving her already frail mother, Meg, needing to stay in hospital for a number of weeks.
And she was flown out on the mail plane which left each morning for Northolt near London as her aunt lived close to the airport.
The family originally came to Jersey shortly after the end of the Occupation when her father, Charles, got a job as the assistant keeper at Corbière Lighthouse.
Left with a baby and toddler son to care for, as well as keeping the seaways safe for shipping, he sent her to relatives in the UK.
Dame Sarah said: ‘He escorted me to the Airport on the bus and put me in the hands of a steward on the 8.15 outgoing Dakota to Northolt.
‘My aunt met me at the airport, recognising me because I was wearing a bonnet that she had sent for me previously.
‘I have heard many stories about Jersey over the years and I am delighted to be finally visiting the Island.’
Her arrival at Northolt caused a fuss as the staff were not expecting her, and her aunt had only got news that she was coming as the plane was due to land so had to rush to collect her.
The confusion over her arrival was not helped as her father had tucked away all the information he had carefully written out under the bedding of her carry cot.
When her aunt at last arrived, the bonnet she had knitted and sent to Jersey proved to be the key.
Dame Sarah, an expert in health who has carried out work for the UK government and has lectured at King’s College London, said: ‘Who needs DNA when you have someone knitting a bonnet for you.’
Her family joined her within two months and they settled in Cambridge, never to return to Jersey.
Dame Sarah came back to lead a meeting at the Hotel de France yesterday of health visitors from the UK – and Family Nursing & Home Care – who specialise in the maternal early childhood sustained home visiting programme.
This weekend she was due to see the Island of her birth but which she never got to know, and Corbière, where the family also lived and her parents ran a tea room, is top of her sightseeing list.
