Stratford RNLI branch has raised £212,000 for the lifeboat charity

THE Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is celebrating 200 years of saving lives at sea and the volunteers at the Stratford branch has played its part in supporting the charity by raising £212,257 over the years.

Since it was founded the RNLI’s volunteer lifeboat crews and lifeguards have saved an 146,277 lives during its two centuries of lifesaving and it’s thanks to the kind donations like those collected by volunteers in Stratford that this vital rescue service continues to save lives.

One such volunteer is Cathy Davies from Stratford who , with her late husband John, started fundraising for RNLI when they moved to Stratford in 1990.

Cathy has served the Stratford branch in various roles including chair and John was so familiar to bank staff in town he was known as “Mr Lifeboat” when he took the money raised from collections to be banked in town.

Cathy explained how the couple started supporting the RNLI in the first place: “John’s interest in the RNLI began when he was aged five and evacuated from Birmingham to Weston-super-Mare to stay with relatives during the Second World War when his family were bombed out. Weston still has a lifeboat station which is probably the nearest one to our land-locked branch. John was taken to see the lifeboats and being a lover of the sea his interest grew during his adult life.

“In 1990 just after we moved to Stratford and the Ladies Guild of RNLI became a branch. We attended the inaugural meeting at the Wesley Hall in Old Town, thinking this might help us to integrate into the community, and it did. From May 1992 John became branch treasurer for over 25 years and I became chairman after the sudden death of Philip Marr in December 2007.

“Our volunteers and the public support RNLI because it is one of the few charities where men and women risk their lives every time they go out to rescue someone at sea or in our rivers”

The branch was represented at a Service of Thanksgiving on the 200th anniversary of the RNLI at Westminster Abbey earlier this year in the presence of the charity’s president, the Duke of Kent. Several long service volunteers were presented with their awards last November, and they were invited to a special RNLI Buckingham Palace Garden party in May.