FORTY years ago this week, a letter appeared in The Northern Echo. It planted a seed, an acorn, from which a woodland of caring has grown so that now St Teresa’s Hospice in Darlington can use its ruby anniversary to launch a vital fund raising campaign.

The handwritten letter was posted to the editor by Yvonne Rowe, a gardener who was caring for her friend, Mary Hester. Mary had cancer and was beyond hospital treatment. She was dying at home, looked after by friends like Yvonne as she needed three morphine injections a day. Yvonne had heard that in Leeds, there was something called a hospice that might have cared for Mary more comfortably and professionally.

So Yvonne wrote to the editors of the three local newspapers that then covered Darlington: “Sir, I have been reading about the wond

See Full Page