A legacy of hope
How a tragic bus crash brought one family closer together
As you get older, you realise it is how you respond to the unexpected events in life that define the person you become, for better or for worse. Ten years ago, my wife and daughter were involved in a tragedy that would have broken some people and fractured relationships. I now believe it has brought my family closer together.
My wife, Sarah, was pushing Pollyanna, then aged two, in her buggy to the bus depot in Mortlake, south-west London, with her mother, Elizabeth. Without warning, a bus driver mounted the pavement at speed and hit all three.
Tragically, Elizabeth died, Pollyanna had her leg amputated below the knee and Sarah suffered severe damage to her leg and hip.
The bus crash occurred just 200 yards from our home. I was at work at the Telegraph when one of our neighbours, who had heard the bang from his kitchen, rang to tell me what had happened.
The three of them had been on their way to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to visit Sarah’s twin sister, Victoria, who had given birth two days earlier. As she waited for them to arrive, slowly becoming anxious about where they had got to, the nurses took away her television so that she could not watch the news from her hospital bed.
By now, Pollyanna was in the same hospital a few floors below, being operated on. Although her right leg looked as if it had merely sustained a deep cut, the injury was in fact much more serious; the limb was being held together by only a flap of skin. Above the line of the cut, Pollyanna’s skin was pink. Below it, her shin, calf, ankle and foot had already turned grey.
“Can’t you just reattach the leg?” I had asked the nurses plaintively. But even after eight hours in surgery, it could not be saved.
Picking up our two other children from school and breaking the news of that terrible day to them will haunt me for ever.
“There has been an accident,” I told Barnaby, who was six years old at the time of the crash, and Sapphire, then four. “Mummy and Pollyanna are both in hospital.”
I paused. I tried to sound upbeat: “Pollyanna may be left with a plastic leg – which will be fun…”
As a family, how do you begin to get over something like this? Being a journalist, I decided to write it all down. It felt raw, but I spared myself nothing. When my jottings appeared as a 5,000-word article in The Telegraph, the reaction from readers was nothing short of extraordinary.
I mentioned how Sarah – whose leg had sustained a “de-gloving” injury, whereby the skin and muscle was sliced off, leaving a large gash – had recovered sufficiently to take up running to build up her strength. Despite the immense pain it caused her, she signed up for a half-marathon and invited readers to sponsor her fundraising to help amputee children around the world.
Two days later, cheques worth hundreds of pounds began arriving in the post. By the following day, we had thousands of pounds. This carried on for weeks. We couldn’t believe it.
So much money was raised by the article that we decided, along with Sarah’s sister and some fabulous friends, to establish a charity in memory of Elizabeth, who had been a calm, kind, courageous person, always giving her time and energy to others. It seemed fitting that she could carry on helping people after her death.
Launched in 2011, Elizabeth’s Legacy of Hope offers support to the limbless in the developing world. The charity became a focus for us, our family and friends. So far it has raised nearly £500,000, supporting more than 240 amputee children in Sierra Leone, Liberia and, recently, India.
The injuries suffered by Sarah and Pollyanna are daily reminders of what happened a decade ago. Pollyanna, who is now 12, has had many operations on her leg to trim the bone as it pushes out of the skin as she grows.
For years after the crash she enjoyed doing ballet lessons with her friends, but stopped when examiners marked her down because of her prosthetic foot. So she took up horse riding instead, winning her dressage class at the annual Riding for the Disabled national championships – all the while juggling frequent hospital appointments.
Her spirit is incredible. Last year she required more surgery and could not wear her prosthetic leg for nearly five months. However, she did not allow this to get her down. She perfected dancing on one leg, and has taken up dance and ballet again.
As for Sarah, her leg hurts to this day; it itches and feels tight. Her foot feels swollen, too. But she says the mental scars are worse. Her occasional panic attacks can be frightening and exhausting. Yet from it all she has emerged as a tireless campaigner. She lobbied successfully for London bus drivers to be taught about the carnage that can be caused by their mistakes at the wheel, and took part in a video that is now shown to trainees. (In our case, the driver was jailed for causing death by dangerous driving and two counts of GBH.)
For all their charitable efforts, Sarah and Victoria received a Points of Light award from David Cameron. Then, last year, she launched the Sarah Hope Line, a phoneline run by Transport for London that provides a “voice of kindness” for the people involved in, or affected by, life-changing incidents that they experience or witness on London transport.
Another of her campaigns secured £1.5 million for the NHS to develop prosthetic technology and to buy sporting prosthetics – running blades and swimming fins – to enable 500 amputee children to take part in sport.
It is through sharing our experience with the inspirational people we have met over the past 10 years – from amputee children to wounded veterans, as well as some of the most skilled and caring people in the medical profession, who are now among our closest family friends – that we have been able to cope.
For us, the challenges will continue over the next 10 years. They may get easier when Pollyanna stops growing, but we will never know why our lives took such a dramatic turn on that sunny spring day in 2007. Yet Sarah and Pollyanna refuse to let it bring them down.
‘Pollyanna’s spirit is incredible. Last year, she perfected dancing on one leg’