Widow keeps up kidney campaign (From Oxford Mail)

Widow keeps up kidney campaign

2:53pm Monday 18th August 2008 in

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June Keep is on a mission and the 75-year-old great-grandmother will not rest until her goal is met.

Mrs Keep, from Wantage, wants to raise £100,000 for the Oxford Kidney Transplant Unit which gave her husband Malcolm not one, but two kidney transplants, plus care spanning 34 years.

Mrs Keep is now a widow, but the fundraising campaign she launched 30 years ago is still going strong and she won't stop until she feels she has repaid the unit.

She said: "When I met Malcolm he was going out with a friend of mine. My mum invited them for tea, but they split up so Malcolm came alone - the rest is history.

"He always had trouble with his kidneys. His mum told me that as a baby he had to be fed with a fountain pen.

"He was invalided out of the Army and then, when our youngest child was about five, he got really poorly and the doctors said one of his kidneys had packed up and the other one was failing fast."

At the time the Keeps had six children. Malcolm had dialysis at home, three times a week, on a machine set up in the garden shed.

After 13 years of this, the Keeps were hit by a double blow.

Mrs Keep said: "In 1980 a kidney became available, but while Malcolm was in hospital having the transplant, our daughter Olwen had a brain haemorrhage.

"It was terrible. Olwen had brain surgery and the tumour ended up being benign, but then Malcolm's kidney rejected and he had to have it removed and went back on dialysis."

A short while later Olwen suggested they do something for the hospitals.

Mrs Keep said: "Olwen started work as an auxiliary nurse and I started holding coffee mornings to raise cash for the kidney unit."

Coffee mornings turned into jumble sales, car boot sales and even dances that doctors from the hospitals attended.

Then Mrs Keep started buying new goods from wholesalers to sell and rented a small shop in Mill Street, Wantage.

She said: "I took it for two months, but had it for 10 years! Then I got this one in the Market Place and have been here for another 19 years."

June's Oxford Kidney Charity Shop sells new and donated goods and has raised £85,000 for the Oxford Kidney Transplant Unit. The money has bought equipment such as a hoist and a special bath.

Mrs Keep said: "The Kidney Unit was always there for us. Four years after his first kidney failed, Malcolm received another one.

"It was donated from a young man who had died in Ireland. That kidney worked and he was able to work part-time again and enjoy a new lease of life. It changed his life for a long time before he eventually became ill with diabetes."

Mrs Keep lost her husband in January 2003, shortly after their golden wedding anniversary, and Mrs Keep threw herself into her fundraising in his memory.

She said: "Next month, Malcolm would have been 80 and I hope to reach my £90,000 milestone, but it is getting difficult to get good things to sell and also meet my rent and other costs."

Mrs Keep urgently needs donations and would be grateful to receive good quality used goods and unwanted gifts. Her shop is at 25 Market Place, near to the church.

She said: "Nothing will stop me reaching my £100,000 target."