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LAURIE Laurie Engel was a smart, funny, charming, sparky, sporty boy. Until he was 11 he never had a more serious ailment than athlete's foot. He lived on a farm in Herefordshire with his parents, Matthew and Hilary, and younger sister Vika. Laurie wanted to win Wimbledon or, failing that, be a sports writer like his dad. Almost anything seemed possible – except what did happen. He was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer. Despite 17 months of intensive treatment, he died in September 2005, aged 13. Laurie's friends often speak of his kindness. He said he wanted to make a difference. His family set up the Laurie Engel Fund to make sure that he would.
Laurie was treated at the Birmingham Children's Hospital, the childhood cancer centre for much of England. The Engel family found the medical care there world-class, but the facilities and surroundings dismal. The hospital staff are also desperate to improve things. The Fund is working with Teenage Cancer Trust and the hospital to ensure that future patients have better conditions than Laurie did. An entirely new ward for teenagers, which has been designed in consultation with patients, parents, TCT and hospital staff, is now complete. Laurie's fund now stands at over £1.1 million, but the ward has cost about £2.5 million altogether. The new ward at Birmingham Childrens Hospital will brighten the lives of many sick teenagers in years to come, and the Engels think Laurie would be very proud.
Each day in the UK six teenagers will be diagnosed with cancer – that is over 2,200 diagnoses a year. Fewer than half of them will be treated on a Teenage Cancer Trust ward, where facilities have been specially designed to meet their needs. These units can improve survival rates. The TCT aims to build enough units in NHS hospitals so that every teenager with cancer can have access to one. Each unit costs about £2 million to build. |
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UPDATE – WINTER 2011 LIFE ON THE NEW UNIT We were impressed on a recent visit to the new unit in Birmingham to hear about the many activities now available to patients.
We saw a display of collages produced in a recent workshop with a professional artist, who came in to work with the young people. A musician comes in weekly to run jamming sessions. Other things going on include cookery, arts and crafts and pizza nights. A group who had finished their treatment went in the spring to the TCT’s annual national conference, ‘Find your sense of tumour’; and another group went on an overnight trip to London, to one of the shows staged annually by TCT at the Albert Hall. And there is a regular support group/social evening for patients which runs monthly.
Youth support coordinator, Zoe Allton, employed by Teenage Cancer Trust, has been working here for a year now, and is full of enthusiasm and ideas for what can be done to help the young patients cope with their situation. On the wall of the social space, a collection of photos of smiling faces is a souvenir of many happy shared experiences. It is great to see that the new unit is not just a building: it is a community.
A giant cheque from the City The worldwide investment company Threadneedle has presented Laurie’s fund with an extremely generous cheque for £4,000. Simon Davies, chief executive of Teenage Cancer Trust, was there to receive it at the company’s City office from Threadneedle’s chief investment officer, Mark Burgess. David Dudding, a Threadneedle fund manager, has been a major supporter of Laurie’s fund, most recently donating the proceeds of his birthday cricket day at Wormsley (see below); and the company promised to follow his lead.  CRICKET DAY AT WORMSLEY David Dudding, already a generous supporter of the fund, celebrated his fortieth birthday in July with a cricket day at the beautiful Wormsley estate in the Chilterns. He asked all his friends not to give him presents, but to make donations instead. David, who is a fund manager at Threadneedle, loves cricket, and learned about Laurie because he was a follower of Matthew's writing in The Guardian.
The day was a huge success, with lots of families enjoying a delicious lunch and traditional tea, a children's entertainer, and even, despite heavy rain in the morning, two games of cricket in the afternoon. An auction of goodies including signed football shirts and cricket bats – one donated to the fund by the ECB had been signed by the Ashes-winning England team – raised £5000; and a stream of contributions on our Justgiving page made by David's friends and family has already raised another £5000. Many, many thanks to David and his wife Catharine for organising this wonderful occasion.
THEY DID IT! Mark Williams and Harry Saville, old school friends of Laurie's, completed a fantastic 1554-mile bike ride in aid of the fund. They rode right across France and Spain, from Normandy to Tarifa on the southern Spanish coast, in just 23 days. They made rapid progress through France, though Spain proved a bit more problematic, what with the mountains and the intense heat which forced them to ride in darkness. They reported their daily progress on Twitter at LaurieEngelBikeRide; and we were alarmed to read on 22 July, only a day away from their destination, that Harry had had an accident, falling off his bike when dazzled by a car's headlights on a winding mountain road. However, with 14 stitches well bandaged, he was undaunted, and able miraculously to finish the course with Mark the next day.
Mark and Harry exceeded their £2000 target, and have now raised more than £3500. If you would like to sponsor them, please click here. Many congratulations to them both for this amazing achievement. They made it sound so easy: but it was a terrific challenge, and they succeeded brilliantly. RIBA AWARD
This is a single storey lightweight structure perched over A& E and the fracture clinic. It is situated in a busy and chaotic part of Birmingham, cut off by roads and surrounded by hospital buildings with different dates, styles and looks all embracing one other. The design has achieved an oasis of peace and calm while still meeting the very specific and stringent requirements set by the NHS. The attention to details and to colours is quite remarkable. The entry corridor with free forms carved out of the thick internal wall to one side is witty and enjoyable and makes for a pleasant approach to the unit. Apparently the unit was the only building which got a unanimous vote from the judges. It now goes onto the shortlist for the Stirling Prize, for RIBA's Building of the Year. LAURIE'S FUND HELPS NEWCASTLE UNIT Now that the Birmingham unit is complete, and money keeps coming in, Laurie's fund has been able to help out with another project at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle. Although there is already a TCT unit for younger teenagers, there is no provision at the moment for youngsters of 18 to 24, who are having to be moved onto an adult oncology ward for their treatment. The plan is to refurbish an area of the hospital to make an 8-bed unit, with recreation space, kitchenette, dining area, juke box, pool table and seating. A donation of £150,000 from Laurie's fund was enough to make sure that the project can go ahead straight away, with building work due to start in September for completion in February next year. WATCH OUR VIDEO NOW  Photography: Jason Pitt FOR LATEST FUND-RAISING EFFORTS BY LAURIE’S FRIENDS SEE “WHAT’S HAPPENING” PAGE WATCH OUR VIDEO NOW!
EXTRACTS FROM THE RED NOTEBOOKS
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We were thrilled to hear that the TCT unit in Birmingham, designed by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, has received one of the prestigious annual awards from RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects. The judges said of the unit: 
