A charity evening will be hosted by the Emma-Jayne Memorial Fund in order to raise funds for Hull Royal Infirmary’s Neurological Unit. This is an annual event and this year’s event will once again be held at the Sutton Social Club on April 22. Guests will be allowed to enter from half past six in the evening with the main event starting at 8 pm and scheduled to continue until 1 am.
There are a number of acts scheduled to perform at the event including Liz McKenny, Four Shades of Grey, Abbie and Taylor Soul. The entry fee is £4 per head and there will also be a mini auction and a raffle.
This is the eighteenth year of the fund which was started by Tony and Ruth Knowles after losing their daughter Emma-Jayne to a brain tumour. Emma Jayne passed away just days before her 22nd birthday and the husband and wife duo has been working hard since that time to raise money for the hospital unit where their daughter was being treated at the time she passed away.
Emma-Jayne was born in 1976 and she attended Tennyson High School and Boston College, doing a catering course in the latter. She worked at Mablethorpe’s Kids Adventure World before opting to work for the Royal Mail where she was posted to deliver in Sutton-on-Sea. She was quite happy with the job and was keen to one day rise to a management position but in February 1998, she reported getting double vision and cold hands. She was referred to Grimsby Hospital for an MRI which revealed that she had a tumour. She was admitted to Hull Royal Infirmary where Kevin Morris was the Consultant Neurosurgeon. This was in April of the same year. Unfortunately, the tumour was too deep to be operated on and her case was also quite rare.
According to her parents, the staff at the hospital took excellent care of her. She had a total of 35 radiotherapy sessions but all the efforts failed and she passed away on December of the same year, less than a year after the diagnosis and only two weeks to her 23rd birthday. Right from the funeral, Emma’s parents have been working to raise funds for the hospital through donations. In July 2000, they sponsored their first event, a Bikeathon. It was intended to be a one-off event but is now held every year among other charity efforts.