BOBBY ROBSON’S GREATEST WIN Dad would be looking down with pride.. his charity’s raised £13m and is still saving lives
with a malignant melanoma. To remove it surgeons took out his teeth and part of the roof of his mouth, fitting him with a partially prosthetic upper jaw.
In 2006 doctors discovered cancer in his right lung when he was X-rayed after a skiing accident.
Later that year he collapsed and was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Surgery left him partially paralysed.
Finally, in 2007 cancer returned to his lung and doctors told him this time it was terminal.
The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation was born after his oncologist Professor
Ruth Plummer told him she needed £500,000 to equip a new cancer trials centre and asked if he knew anyone who might donate.
Sir Bobby stepped in, saying launching his Foundation would be “like being at the helm of a team again”. In March 2008 he presented her with the first cheque, and said: “I’ve achieved many things during my career in football, won trophies, represented my country, received all kinds of wonderful awards and even been knighted, but I’m as proud of this achievement as any other in my life.”
In February 2009 he officially opened the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle and became one of its first
Lady Elsie with stars & medics at centre’s lab patients, calling it his “last and greatest team”.
The charity works within the NHS partnering charities and organisations to fund ground-breaking cancer treatment and innovative patient care and support services. It aims to build closer links between scientists, doctors, nurses and funding organisations to speed delivery of new therapies and improve cancer services.
It does not employ professional fundraisers and instead rel ies completely on the generosity, commitment and imagination of the public.
Patrons include ex-footballers Alan Shearer, Niall Quinn and Mick Mills and chef and Norwich City director Delia Smith.
Sir Bobby’s wife Lady Elsie, 83, and their three sons are all committed to continuing its work. “He was very poorly for the last three years of his life,” Lady Elsie said last year. “He wasn’t able to get about so easily.
“He became wheelchair-bound in the last few months of his life, but his determination got him through such a lot. He was just determined that he was going to make the most of whatever time he had left.
“I can still see him trying to get upstairs and falling. And eventually he had to sleep downstairs.
“That was a hard thing for him to accept, which it would be for any man who had been as active in their lives as he was.”
She added: “He lived for 16 months after we started the Foundation.
“He got a lot of purpose out of that in the last year or so of his life. It gave him a driving force.”
We see his legacy on a daily basis, prolonging life and giving hope MARK ROBSON SIR BOBBY’S SON
Find out more and give at sirbobbyrobsonfoundation.org.uk