I remember one story she told about dad. She told it a lot when we were young but she told it once more recently too.
It was when they were first married in Glasgow. Dad was working in a bakery and they picked on a young lad who was fairly new. The lad had done something wrong, something minor but they had jumped straight to sacking him. So dad immediately organised for the whole workforces to walk out in solidarity.
The outcome was that the manager backtracked and gave the lad his job back so that all the other workers would come back.
But they refused to have dad back. They said he was a troublemaker and not one of them including the young lad spoke up for dad.
It was a story I heard often as a child and the feeling it left me was that it's important to stand up for what is right even if you are the only one doing it but also don't expect to get any credit or fanfare for it. You are more likely to get the sack.
The admiration for what he had done must have been in the way she told it
But when she told me again more recently as an older person looking back. She added at the end "He was my hero"
And I think about all the women who might have been upset or angry about their husband losing their job at a time when they literally didn't have two pennies to rub together. But she was so proud of him. He did what was right and he was her hero.