Captain Tom, The Pandemic Hero Who Raised $50m, Dies at 100

Pandemic Hero captain tom

At the time of Coronavirus Pandemic last year, Captain Sir Tom Moore, a 99-year-old veteran, did something amazing to support the people in the NHS who had helped him through not only cancer but a fractured hip two years earlier. He was eternally grateful to the health care workers and he knows the journey they have to go through for battling COVID-19.

So he vowed to walk 100 laps of his garden, 50 meters at a time, before his 100th birthday and he was hoping to raise £1,000 for NHS charities.

Which he did and what he received was generous and incredible.

Some £38.9 million later, Captain Tom has encouraged a whole nation and got praise and admiration from across the world. People were cheering for him and the initiative he took at this part of his life.

Moore’s daughter Hannah last week updated via Twitter, that her father had been fighting pneumonia in recent weeks and was hospitalized this past Sunday for COVID-19. His death was announced yesterday, three months short of his 101st birthday.

Pandemic Hero captain tom

via The New York Times:

Born in Keighley, a town in Yorkshire, to a family of builders, Mr. Moore was trained as a civil engineer. In 1940, at 20, he was conscripted and assigned to the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment. First stationed in Cornwall, in southwestern England, he was chosen for officer’s training and deployed to India. He trained Indian recruits to ride motorcycles, a lifelong passion he had picked up as a boy.

Later, Mr. Moore was sent to Burma, now known as Myanmar. Mr. Moore returned home after the war and built a comfortable life as the manager of a concrete company. He remained energetic until his late 90s, mowing the lawn, tending a greenhouse and driving his own car. But two years ago he fell in his kitchen, breaking his hip and a rib and puncturing a lung.

His hospitalization left him with an enduring appreciation for the doctors and nurses of the National Health Service. [source]

Mr. Moore’s feat, which grew out of a challenge from his son-in-law, became a media sensation and in the process, Mr. Moore became a pop-culture phenomenon. His walks were broadcast by the BBC, CNN, NBC and Al Jazeera, and his face became a staple on the front page of British tabloids. Those newspapers nicknamed him Captain Tom, his military rank until he was made an honorary colonel by the Army Foundation College.

He negotiated a multi-book deal, recorded a chart-topping song and was granted a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II, who came out of seclusion for the first time since the pandemic began to bestow the honor at Windsor Castle in July. [source]

Pandemic Hero captain tom

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