A humble attempt by a 99-year-old war veteran to raise £1,000 as a tribute to doctors and nurses has blown into an outbreak of altruism as people in the UK and around the globe hunkered down in lockdowns showered £10 million by Wednesday evening that went beyond his ‘wildest dreams’.
Yorkshire-based Captain Tom Moore, who saw action in India during World War II, promised to walk 10 laps of his garden with a walking aid, hoping to raise £1,000 as a way to reward doctors and nurses who helped him recover from skin cancer and him replacement.
The target was passed within hours of Moore launching his effort on April 8, and on Wednesday morning it touched £5 million live on BBC television. By the evening, millions more poured in, reaching £10 million, donated by over 5 lakh people online.
Moore is walking 10 laps of the garden a day and had hoped to hit 100 laps in time for his 100th birthday on April 30. Health secretary Matt Hancock paid him tributes: “Captain Tom, you’re an inspiration to us all, and we thank you.”
Blown away by the millions, Moore said: “I think that’s absolutely enormous. At no time when we started off with this exercise did we anticipate we’d get anything near that sort of money…Our brave nurses and doctors are frontline in this case”.
“This time our army are in doctors and nurses uniforms and they’re doing a marvellous job. It just shows that people have such high regard for matters of our NHS and it’s really amazing that people have paid so much money. It’s almost unbelievable isn’t it,” he said from his home in Keighley.
The money raised will be donated to NHS Charities Together, a group representing various charity organisations linked to the NHS.
Moore’s daughter, Hannah, said her father was overwhelmed when the figure reached the first £1 million, but he responded with a determination to walk more: “He’s a typical Yorkshireman, so he’s very stoic, very controlled and takes everything in his stride.”
“We always knew that he was this incredible gem of a man, but we never had any idea that his story would capture the hearts of the nation. We thought we could give people a little bit of happy and we wanted to share a little bit about him, and it has just gone beyond even our wildest, wildest dreams.”
As the death toll in the UK approached 13,000 and 1 lakh cases, there is an outpouring of gratitude and concern for NHS staff dealing with growing numbers of people stricken with coronavirus.
