A DAY OUT AT WEMBLEY ELVIN MADE IT ALL POSSIBLE

A DAY OUT AT WEMBLEY ELVIN MADE IT ALL POSSIBLE.

Recently tens of thousands of fans filled Wembley Stadium for the two non league day Cup finals some of them may have glanced at a memorial bust on display in its lobby.Here is the story of a true working-class lad that made good or in footballing terms really Roy of the Rovers stuff.

When you enter the lobby you will see a bronze bust it is labelled 'Arthur Elvin', but few will likely recognise that name here is the working class lad named Arthur who as a young lad took full advantage of the opportunities that came his way, he truly understood the meaning of the word opportunity ,more so than some of us do when we are very young & finding our way in life ,we think im not ready yet it will come again when invaribaly they dont which is why they are called opportunities anyway young Arthur went from running a tobacco kiosk on the site in 1924 to buying the stadium three years later, Wembley may never have become England's national stadium,let me fill you in on the build up of circumstances that led to this.

Born and raised in a small terraced house in Norwich, on leaving school at 14 he started a series of odd jobs. After the jam factory they included in a boot factory, at a grocer's and with a wine merchant.

He then moved to London to work for a soft-soap company. However once he arrived in London his progress was delayed as World War One started and by the spring of 1918 he was in the Royal Air Force, flying as the observer in a two-man plane on reconnaissance missions.
In late June, 10 days before Elvin's 19th birthday, the plane was shot down and he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, as we recently celebrated 80 years from ve day of the second world war,it's worth remembering the horrific actions & stories of the previous war anyway I will continue the story.

After the war he had a job involving demolition work clearing up some of the military infrastructure left in France. By 1924, though, he was unemployed - but things were about to change quite dramatically for him.An ex-officers' association found him a job at the British Empire Exhibition. This was a huge two-year propaganda extravaganza - designed to promote the idea of the British Empire to the public - and had led to new buildings, pavilions and even a stadium built on what had been parkland at Wembley, in north-west London.
Elvin's job there was in a tobacco kiosk, but one shop was never going to be enough for this natural entrepreneur, this is where he seized an opportunity mainly of his own making.
He gradually took over more kiosks - once telling a newspaper that he kept his shops open later than others and so "the money rolled in".

When the exhibition was over, he soon spotted another money-making opportunity.
The exhibition's organisers needed to sell off the buildings quickly.
With the profits from his tobacco kiosks and demolition experience from his previous job, Elvin soon set himself up to win contracts to dispose of some of the buildings.
Elvin borrowed the £122,500 needed to purchase the stadium - which would be worth more than £6m in 2025 terms - from a financier named Jimmy White, who agreed to take repayments in instalments, ever the opportunist Elvin persuaded a group of city investors to put up the money to create a company, with him in charge, to buy the stadium from him - not only paying off his debt, but also making himself a tidy profit in the process.
Elvin was managing director of the company, and after taking charge in August 1927 would run Wembley for the next 30 years.

Today he is mostly forgotten - apart from that one spot in the lobby at the modern stadium, where his memorial bust still stands watch. I think this,is a truly remarkable story of someone who I'm sure most of us have never heard of but because of this man's wisdom not only did football come home in 1966 but all clubs at every level have a venue that is still the pinnacle venue for all who to aspire to reaching as I'm sure Steve, Colin of Romford & everyone on the league committee will confirm how it gave us all such cherished memories when the Esl had it's own day in the sunshine a year ago.