EXCLUSIVE by Sam Hawcroft
More than £2,400 raised in memory of Sarah Keeling and her daughter Grace has been presented to Withernsea RNLI during a poignant visit to the lifeboat station.
Members of the Jammie Dodgers netball team and their families travelled from Nottinghamshire to Withernsea on Sunday, July 19, to meet the volunteer crew, tour the station and present the proceeds from a charity tournament held three weeks earlier.
Sarah, 45, was a much-loved member of the Jammie Dodgers, while 15-year-old Grace was a pupil at Quarrydale Academy in Sutton-in-Ashfield and a youth leader with her local Brownie unit.
The fundraiser was organised following the tragedy at Withernsea in January, with the money given directly to the lifeboat station whose volunteers were involved in the emergency response.
The netball event, held at Quarrydale Academy on Saturday, June 27, brought together teams from across the community and was supported by Grace’s Brownie unit, community volunteers, friends and past and present members of the school.
It raised more than £2,400 on the day, while almost £300 had also been donated through an online fundraising page, taking the overall amount closer to £3,000.
During their visit, the group were shown around the station and given an insight into how its volunteer crew responds when the pagers sound.
They learned about the crew’s protective equipment, the lifeboat and its communications systems before watching the boat being launched from the beach during an exercise.
The visit also gave the group the chance to hear directly from members of the crew about the lasting effect the tragedy had had on them.
Several people became emotional as the volunteers described how they had supported one another at the station, but still had to process what had happened after returning home.
Kev Smith said: “Collectively, we help each other, but it’s when you go home. It never, ever leaves you.”
Anthony Binns, known as Binhead, said: “We all went home crying, every single one of us.”
Fellow crew member James Medcalf added that one of the hardest things they had to deal with was continuing to see people putting themselves at risk near the sea despite the dangers.
Organiser Colette Anthony said the team had spoken carefully about whether everyone felt able to visit Withernsea because of its connection with the tragedy.
She said: “I had to speak to all the others to make sure they wanted to come down to where it happened.
“We weren’t sure whether everybody would want to, but we had a discussion and they all did. My son comes to every netball match, so he knew Sarah as well.”
Vicki Watson, who works at Quarrydale Academy and helped arrange the use of the school for the tournament, described the fundraising day as “amazing”.
She said: “It all came together. Grace went to Quarrydale, so I asked whether we could have the courts and the school said it was not a problem.
“It was a cracking day. We had some laughs, but the presentation at the end got emotional.”
Sarah’s teammates had been due to play an important league match shortly after her death but initially cancelled it.
The game was rearranged for the following week and the team secured the victory they needed to win the league.
Vicki said: “We felt we had to play it. She would have shouted at us otherwise!”
She said plans for the fundraising tournament had begun when the team met on the evening they would ordinarily have played together.
“We all met instead of playing and we were saying, ‘Right, what do we do?’” she said. “It started in the background with us asking whether we could do this or that.
“After the tournament, everybody was asking whether we were going to do it again next year, so that is something we are now looking at.”
Vicki said returning to Withernsea to make the presentation had been bittersweet for the group.
She added: “It is special, but it is such a double-edged thing. None of us wanted any of this to have happened, but we have done it for the right reasons.”
Withernsea RNLI lifeboat operations manager Darren Hickey said the station was deeply grateful for the donation.
He said: “We are completely humbled and completely blown away. The thought given to us by people who are also going through troubled times puts into context what has happened.
“This money will go a long way towards supporting our operational capability.”
Darren explained that the donation would be held for use by Withernsea RNLI and invested in maintaining its life-saving service, including any equipment or support needed specifically by the station.
The visitors also heard about the increasingly varied situations faced by lifeboat crews and the station’s work to make its service more inclusive, including Makaton training and communication cards designed to help volunteers reassure and support people with additional needs.