“The 100-year-old former soldier, and his indomitable efforts to raise money for NHS charities, by making laps of his garden on a walking frame, were a rare ray of light in last year’s gloom. It was his optimism, as much as the quiet stoicism often found in war veterans who have seen what he must have seen, that captured imaginations. His constant refrain that the sun would eventually come out, that tomorrow would be better, that together we could achieve miracles, resonated at a time when people sorely needed to hear it. But he also did something invaluable to shift perceptions of older people and their place in society, during a pandemic that saw some ugly prejudices about the value of older people’s lives compared with younger ones spill into the open. He was physically frail, yet evidently had so much to give. In his determination and his selflessness, he put many people a fraction of his age to shame. To watch him take those last effortful steps of his sponsored walk, accompanied towards the end by a guard of honour made up by serving soldiers, was to see the years peel back and reveal the younger man he must have been and still remained.” This is an extract from a piece I’ve just read from Gaby Hinchcliffe, which sums up why he became an icon.
