Drive to raise funds

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 8

Drive to raise funds

Mrs Beryl Webb stands next to the 1938 Vauxhall D.X. Light Six restored by her son, Rodger, who died in 1984 of leukaemia.

Mrs Webb, her husband, George, and son, Mervyn, will set off in the car next week for Whangaparaoa, north of Auckland, and back to raise funds for leukaemia research.

They hope to raise $lO,OOO, which they will give to the Christchurch Clinical School of Medi-

cine. Mrs Webb yesterday said she hoped the money would go towards a leukaemia cure, or at least towards prolonging leukaemia sufferers’ lives. “Rodger was diagnosed at the age of eight, and lived six years. I would have liked to have seen him live for 16 more

years,” she said. About $1390 had already been raised from a book of poems about Rodger’s life, written and illustrated by Mrs Webb. Before his death, Rodger had stripped and reconditioned the Vauxhall’s engine. “All he wanted was to go away for a trip in his

car. , “We managed it — but when we got home we took him to hospital in it and he never came home again.” The car had been in the family for 21 years. The Webbs were the second owners. Mrs Webb said she thought it fitting to make the fund-raising trip in

the Vauxhall. The family will begin the trip on February 8, from the Waimairi Cemetery, where Rodger is buried — alongside his brother, David, who died a cot death in 1961. They will travel up the east coast of the South Island, then up through the middle of the North Island to Auckland, then Whangaparaoa, back down the west coast of both islands and back to Christchurch. They expect the journey to take five weeks.