A ‘WOMAN of mystery’ from York- who worked at one time for NATO and once dined with Barbara Bush at the White House - has died, aged 81.

Barbara Dodds was a senior secretary whose career also took her to the University of York and British Rail on railway accident investigations,said a close friend, Roy Thompson.

He said Barbara lived for many years in Heworth and then for a couple of years at New Earswick but most recently resided in a nursing home in Scarborough, ‘where she gave the impression that she was a woman of mystery, perhaps a spy.’

He said she was born in Sheffield and trained in book-keeping, shorthand and typing, ‘achieving phenomenal speeds in each which were to set her up for life.’

She worked for a bank and for the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, for whom she she single-handedly organised a 3,000 delegate international conference at the Royal Albert Hall.

“She had a period away in 1966 working for NATO in Brussels, working for the Head of the Naval Armaments in Northern Europe facing down the Soviet bloc,” he said. “Perhaps this was the start of the reputation she gained with her carers as a woman of mystery.”

In the early 1970s, she became personal secretary to Professor Jack Wiseman, director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of York, and took two periods of secondment to Clark University, in Massachusetts, where she organised international conferences.

On one occasion, she was invited to dinner at the White House."Later Barbara Bush asked Barbara where she came from and she answered “Sheffield, where I see your cutlery comes from!’”

He said she also ran her own secretarial business working for British Rail on railway accident investigations, for which she trained herself in railway signalling management, and in retirement volunteered for AgeConcern, now Age UK.