Graham Hawkin makes presentation to Lingen Davies Cancer Centre
Shrewsbury Town manager Graham Turner visited the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital earlier this week alongside his former Gay Meadow assistant Graham Hawkins to make a presentation to the Lingen Davies Cancer Centre.
Just over four years ago Graham Hawkins, who went on to manage Wolves after leaving Shrewsbury in the summer of 1982, was diagnosed with low grade non-Hodgkin lymphoma and, while he had treatment at the RSH, he decided he wanted to raise money to help cancer patients.
He wanted to buy luxury items - items the NHS couldn't afford to buy - for those using the chemotherapy or haematology day centre for treatment.
He organised two fundraising dinners last year, one at Shrewsbury’s Greenhous Meadow stadium, the other at Molineux, with the proceeds going to the Cancer Patient Care Fund.
The centre piece at both dinners was the performance as guest speaker of Graham Turner, and the money raised has now been used to present eight iPad Airs and two Notebooks to the Lingen Davies Cancer Centre at the RSH.
Mr Hawkins said: "It was probably when I was having the chemotherapy that I thought I would like to do some fundraising.
"I had computers on my mind then. I was there up to six hours, seven hours at a time, and it gets a bit lonely. You can only read so many newspapers and I just thought is there anything else that could be done?
"There were no computers. So as I am sat there thinking about it, obviously Graham springs to mind.
"I am at Shrewsbury and I was assistant manager to Graham here many years ago and I knew he could certainly pull a crowd in. He also pulled the crowd in at Wolves as well.
"I asked him very nicely if he would do it for free, which he did! Every penny we took was profits which was fabulous."
Graham Turner added: "It was a real pleasure to help him because I knew how much work he had put in to get it all organised both at Shrewsbury and at Molineux. I did the easy bit!
"It has also been nice to renew the friendship again."