Page 296 - She's One Crazy Lady!

to breast cancer and therefore, was interested in supporting a Breast Cancer Charity. Our conversations were to continue and putting our heads together we came up with the idea of creating a Crazy Hats pin badge that would identify our cause and could be sold to raise more money. The badge, of course, had to be the pink mortar board! With her contacts, Jayne introduced us to Michael and his daughter Shân who owned a company called ‘Elizabeth Parker’ in Wellingborough that made pin badges. Within weeks, our ideas were on the drawing board and our badge made, kindly sponsored by Jayne and with Michael and Shân providing us with suitable flatpack
brown boxes to display them in, boxes that I took home to paint pink and embellish – hundreds of them! They were basic but did the job.
“Elizabeth Parker is proud to be the badge suppliers to the Crazy Hats Appeal. We believe that wearing a badge unites and distinguishes all those like-minded people who have supported the Appeal.”
Michael’s wife, Hilary, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer shortly after we met him and very sadly passed away just as we had got to know them well. Hilary, despite hers being a different cancer, had been very supportive of what we were doing as were her close friends – two more Sue’s, another Julie and Joy, who for many years, in Hilary’s memory, worked incredibly hard to organise annual, spectacular and very popular coffee mornings at their own, and other friends’ houses that got bigger and bigger and raised thousands of pounds for Crazy Hats.
Can you see how that ripple in the pond was spreading?
Back to the pin badge. With the badge made we had to think about where to sell them, knowing we needed to be ‘out there’ with the public. What better place than the local shopping centres? Phone calls were made to Wellingborough and to Kettering and they agreed to letting us have a pitch for one day in October – Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Jayne said she would have a box of them on her counter in the shop – word spread and other shops were signing up to take them too, as well as individuals taking them to work and to school to sell. All of this had to be meticulously handled for there was the question of trust and accountability. We, naturally, had never embarked on anything like this before so had to ensure all the outlets were given guidance and signed appropriate paperwork to cover any mishaps or, indeed, thefts, which unfortunately, over the years, did occasionally happen
“We believe that wearing
a badge
unites and distinguishes all those like- minded people who have supported the Appeal.
”
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