Charity Begins at Home

This afternoon I attended the memorial service for Syd Nicholson, who died this summer at the ripe old age of 89. Syd was a tireless campaigner for a local charity in South Shields Tyne and Wear that sought to provide much needed equipment for the local district hospital. May he rest in peace.

Syd was definitely a local character. After suffering a heart attack in 1982 he helped set up and became the driving force behind a local charity named Heartcall. This organization has now raised over £1 million. Syd's ability to shake the money tree in his home town was legendary. 

In his eulogy Mr David Fuller remembered an occasion when he asked Syd just how did he manage to get so much interest, Syd's reply was thus

"Shy bairns get nowt so it is up to us noisy ones to shout for them"

Which pretty much summed up Syd's drive for Heartcall. He did it because he could, because it was needed.

The Right Hon David Milliband MP for South Shields quoted a Winston Churchill line

"You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give."

A search I have made on the interweb has failed to discover the source of that quote. However these words he is meant to have uttered in Dundee in 1908

"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?"

Either of these quotes will do to describe Syd's relentless drive for his charity. I guess you could say he was "old school". Born in 1923 he predates the NHS and the welfare state. He came from a time when you had to reach out for  the poor, the hungry, the downtrodden, the dispossessed because no one else would. 

It is a sentiment still relevant today. Just think how different life could be if we all reached out to the community at large in some way

Come on! Lets all stand up for shy bairns!