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My name is Terry Holt. The Coronavirus is keeping us all stuck indoors but, being 96 and walking with a walker I did not want to stop keeping mobile. Unless it pours with rain or is very windy, I do a daily walk and would like to use this as an opportunity to continue fundraising for Save the Children even during lockdown.

If you are interested, I have written a piece about my history and involvement with Save the Children over the years. 

I had been in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War. I had volunteered for overseas service many times from 1941 but it hadn’t happened. Eventually, in 1946, I got my posting and went to the Middle East, which was much more exciting. There I became a Pay Clerk for a Company of largely locally enlisted ATS girls, who were mainly Jewish girls from Palestine. Through them, I heard first-hand about how
and why they had arrived there. They were from Germany and Italy where their parents had made their escape from the Nazi and Fascist Regimes of these countries which had imprisoned and killed so many men, women and children which I had also heard about through films and radio programmes about the way children had suffered in Germany and under Mussolini.

In 1948 the Mandate between Britain and Palestine had ended and the United Nations had recommended “Partition in Palestine”, leaving the Jews and Arabs to fight it out with the war that followed. This time it was the Arab children who suffered most.

My service ended after I met my future husband, I arrived back in England at the end of 1948 and given a two-week leave. The next years were full of were spent in Manchester where my husband, who had just been demobbed, started his Science Degree at Manchester University and in 1949 our son was born.

There was more fighting in the Gaza Strip and it made me remember all I had been told about the fate of children in such war-torn areas. This made me look for some organisation that could fit the bill. Save the Children was the one I choose. 

So there we were in 1959 with the beginning of my association with them. We formed our small group, which grew and became known as the Cheadle and Gatley Branch. We had conferences in London every year until fairly recently, which at least two members attended. Our activities included coffee mornings on a regular basis which were well attended. We also organised annual fayres and jumble sales and our members and many volunteers knitted blankets, which were sent where necessary. Once a year we did our House to House Collection. This was a good source of income and although we all got our share of rebuffs, most people were very generous. For seventeen years, we ran an Annual Dance at Abney Hall, which was our Town Hall when we were just Cheadle and Gatley before Greater Manchester was formed and we become linked to Stockport. We also had other big dances at various venues. In those days there were about twenty groups in the Manchester Area. One year we all got together and had a grand Fair at Lyme Hall which Princess Anne attended.

It is now over 60 years later but children still suffer and I would like to keep doing my part for the charity by walking every day to raise money for Save the Children.

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