Sidney Isaac De Haan, OBE (6 February 1919 – 16 February 2002) was the founder of Saga, an internationally known group of companies providing a wide range of services for people aged 50 and over.
Early life
Born in Mile End, East London on 6 February 1919, one of the eight sons and three daughters of a shoe factory foreman, he left school at the age of 14 and began training as a chef, working at The Waldorf Hilton, London for a while. In 1939 he was called up to the Royal Army Medical Corps and was captured at Dunkirk, he spent three years in a Stalag in Eastern Europe and was then released in order to escort sick prisoners of war who were being repatriated in 1943. Upon arrival in the UK he was transferred to a hospital in the south of England where he met his wife Margery Crick, a nurse, and they married in 1945. They had three sons, David (in 1945), Roger (in 1948) and Peter (in 1952).
Career
After the war, De Haan had an ambition to buy and run a small seaside hotel, so he bought the Rhodesia Hotel in Folkestone which enabled him to fulfil this wish, but he was to discover that holidaymakers did not come to Folkestone outside the brief summer season.
The De Haans noticed the large number of retired people who came to the south-east coast after the high season crowds had gone. De Haan decided to offer affordable, off-peak holidays exclusively to people who were retired.