Life Well Lived

This may seem macabre, but I like reading obituaries of extraordinary people.

All in all, the British seem to provide better ones than the rest of us. [It must have something to do with the Empire.] Here is an excerpt from the obituary of Janet Adams, 86:

Then began her life as a roving Red Cross troubleshooter. In 1949 she went out to Malaya, where the insurrection by Chinese communists against British administration had not long begun. Here with a colleague, Teresa Spens, she did pioneer work in establishing medical services in the “new villages” which had been set up to house Chinese squatters from the countryside and to isolate their occupants from Communist guerrilla influence. This was perilous work, involving as it did driving between these settlements, unescorted, along isolated jungle routes where guerrillas at first reigned supreme. She and Spens were the forerunners of hundreds of British Red Cross workers ultimately to serve in Malaya, in 30 teams covering the entire country.

She moved in 1953 as a field officer to Northern Nigeria. By then she had qualified as a midwife, and she set up maternity and child welfare clinics as well as establishing health education facilities. The following year she went to the Gold Coast, soon to become independent as Ghana. There she was co-author of a report for the government on training, and on welfare and health education.

On September 24, 1955, a hurricane (coincidentally codenamed “Janet”) struck the Windward Islands with devastating force, causing great destruction in Grenada, and on Carraciou, a small island 30 miles to the north. There, only two buildings were left standing.

On leave in Scotland by the banks of the River Spey, Janet Adams was summoned by a telephone call to Red Cross HQ, which dispatched her to Grenada with a single tent. There, and later on Carraciou, she and Red Cross colleagues organised shelter for thousands whose homes had been destroyed by Hurricane Janet.

Her next assignment took her back to Africa. In Sierra Leone she helped to set up a blood donor service and milk feeding scheme, and, as she did in other African countries nearing independence, helped their British Red Cross organisations to transform themselves into national ones.