JEAN McKerrow, who was active in the Girl Guides for many dec-ades, becoming Oxfordshire County Commissioner, died on January 11, aged 88.

Mrs McKerrow – neé Jean Brown – was a Brownie and a Guide in her native Glasgow and started the first Brownie pack in the city that welcomed both Catholics and Protestants.

She became the youngest District Commissioner for the Guides in Glasgow at the age of 23.

She graduated from The Domestic Science College in Glasgow in the early 1940s and then joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment, catering at The Royal Naval Hospital in Portsmouth until the end of the Second World War.

On demobilisation she joined a company in Glasgow where she was responsible for catering.

It was in Portsmouth that she met Lieutenant Stuart McKerrow, a Royal Navy radio officer.

They married in 1949 and moved to Oxford when he was appointed to teach geology at Oxford University.

In the 1950s Mrs McKerrow ran the Headington School Guide company.

She went on to become Guiding Headington District Commissioner.

She launched Guide and Brownie packs in Blackbird Leys in the 1960s and became district commissioner for Blackbird Leys and Littlemore.

She then became Division Commissioner for all of Oxford east of Magdalen Bridge, and finally County Commissioner in the 1970s and 1980s.

She also represented the Guide Association on the Youth Council.

Fellow Guides from that time talk warmly about how she gave them confidence to carry responsibility.

In 1960, now with three sons, Dr and Mrs McKerrow moved from Headington to Iffley, where, as well as continuing to be involved with the Guides, Mrs McKerrow stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal party candidate in local elections. In the 1970s she became a city magistrate.

Mrs McKerrow accompanied her husband to an Geological Conference in Prague in 1968, when the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia.

Their stories and photographs of the events were published in the Oxford Mail on their return.

From the mid-1970s, Dr and Mrs McKerrow lived in Kirtlington until they moved to sheltered accommodation in North Oxford in 2002.

Two years later she suffered a major stroke and spent her last five years in a nursing home in London, near two of her sons.

Mrs McKerrow was an active member of the congregation at St Columba’s United Reform Church in Alfred Street, Oxford, where her funeral will be held on Wednesday, January 27, at 1pm.

Dr McKerrow predeceased her. Their three sons, And-rew, Donald and Graham, and three grandchildren, Kate, Nick and Ali survive them.