FUNDED PROJECT
DYNAMIC
DUO
Veteran crime fighter works in tandem with Wooden Spoon to allow students to saddle up
G
EORGE Hedges is not a man easily moved to tears. Hardened and exposed to life’s crueller characteristics and injustices by a long and distinguished career in the police force, he concedes to having a thicker skin than most. As a consequence, the last thing the former chief constable suspected one month into his retirement in 2002 was to find himself emotionally shell-shocked by a chance conversation with a respite nurse. “I’ve sat on a settee with a mum and a dad and told them their daughter had been murdered, and cried with them because there was nothing else to do,” explained the father-
of-three and grandfather to six. “I really thought I’d seen and heard it all until this nurse told me about a family who lost their 15-year-old daughter to a brain tumour just eight days after burying a 12-year-old son who had died as a result of the same condition.” The tragic tale and its storyteller’s subsequent revelation that she was one of only two children’s home respite nurses operating in Oxfordshire had a profound impact on George, who immediately shelved plans to fill his days with “as little as possible”. The 75-year-old said: “I had nothing to do the next day, so I decided to get off my arse and do something.”
Spring/Summer 2017
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