MGA News Summer 2003

Cynthia and Geoff Buckley stepped down from the MGA Board in July 2002 and have been given a Civic Award by Derby Council in recognition of all that they have done for people diagnosed as suffering from Myasthenia Gravis. We have paraphrased a report in the Derby Evening Telegraph on April 12th 2003.

'Discovering that a member of your family has a relatively unknown disease can turn your world upside down. When Derby couple, Cynthia and Geoff Buckley were told in 1960 that Cynthia’s mother, Mary Woodcock (picture above) had been diagnosed with myasthenia they had nowhere to turn. Forty years ago, little was known about Myasthenia Gravis, so Cynthia and Geoff decided to set up their own society to help fund research into the condition. After several meetings - the first of which happened in 1968 - the UK’s first Myasthenia Gravis Association was born in Derby and in 1976 it became a charity. And now the hard work and dedication of Cynthia and Geoff has been recognised by Derby City Council, which has given them a Civic Award. When being interviewed by the Derby Evening Telegraph reporter, Cynthia said :-

“When my mother was diagnosed with myasthenia, people did not really know much about it. We were handed a list of about 150 people who had also been diagnosed, so my husband contacted them and 99 per cent of them said they had not heard of anyone else who had the disease. It all started from there and we eventually become quite a big operation, so we moved into our first offices in 1987 in Nottingham Road, Derby, thanks to help from the Liversage Trust. The first Myasthenia Association was set up in America but we were the first one in the UK. The Charity’s headquarters has been in Alfreton Road since 1994. MGA was run entirely as a voluntary organisation until 1988 but has grown, with branches across the country, dedicated to raising awareness of the disease and raising money for research. We are very grateful for the award, although I think it should be more for my husband as he has worked tirelessly in memory of his mother-in-law, who died in 1974”. '

For our part, we are immensely proud of what Cynthia and Geoff have achieved. The Telegraph article outlined the main events of how the Charity came about, but, of course, could not go into all the details of what has happened and the enormous undertakings that they have been involved in for some 35 years. We, the MGA, take great pride in them and are very grateful to Derby Council for giving them this award.

MGA NEWS Summer 2003

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