Interviewer

Could I start first by asking your names?

Peter Cook. Julie Cook

Peter Cook. Julie Cook.

Interviewer

And could I ask your ages?

Peter Cook. Julie Cook

82. 81.

Interviewer

And could I ask which charity we are mainly talking about today?

Peter and Julie Cook

Aphasia Re-Connect.

Interviewer

So Peter, we’ll start with you. What first started you to getting involved in volunteering? What inspired you?

Peter Cook

It almost started in my teenage years when I was a member of the Boys Brigade and I did a lot of helping in running of the Boys Brigade as a Staff Sergeant, doing all the things that were involved with helping young people come in. In a way it was a challenge I think, that I accepted and it was one that I wanted to take on. And throughout most of my life there’s been some period where I’ve been accepting challenges, whether they be the Boys Brigade and, and actual fact I did something in Southern Africa for them as well. And then I joined the Round Table, which is a young man’s association, but does help in raising money for charity, although it isn’t intimately involved in a long term charity. I have been in the City and been involved in livery companies and worked for the livery company’s apprenticeship scheme, which requires sort of me to continue my work on that subject. And then quite recently, so far, seven years ago, I got involved in Aphasia Re-connect. The introduction was quite simply by my wife working there before, and introducing me to it. So that’s the background to my involvement in charitable work, which has probably stretches from about 1959 to today.

Interviewer

Thank you. Nicely introduced your wife into the equation. So can you tell me a bit about your involvement in volunteering?

Julie Cook

My first really serious, but I’ve always been interested in helping people. So when I was in full-time work, I volunteered locally and did shopping for people who really needed help because I had no, more time than that. After we sold our business, I actually decided to volunteer with the CAB, and I did that for seven years. And that was challenging and interesting. In those days you had to do two full days a week, and a Saturday morning.  After the CAB then, after seven years, I dropped that, and then I was involved in a charity, which was helping in Kosova. And we, for 10 years I was in cold and dreary and not very clean warehouses, packing shoe boxes full of goodies that would be sent to schools in Kosova. And I went out there myself one Christmas and spent a week there, which was getting out of one’s comfort zone.

Julie Cook

And then that actually came to an end where I was living. And so I got involved in Aphasia Re-Connect. Reason for that was in, I was also involved in Round Table with my husband, and one of our Round Tablers had a massive stroke and had aphasia. Fortunately, he recovered speech, and this Aphasia Re-Connect helped him. And through him we all got involved. So I was running the Bromley group with another Round Tabler for so many years. He got very ill, and suddenly I was left running it myself. And that is more or less when my husband got involved as well.

Interviewer

Excellent.  Well, I am going to keep on you for a moment. So could you help me understand what happens at this group in Bromley? What

Julie Cook

The group in Bromley meets twice a month? That is in a church hall which obviously we have to pay for and raise the money. And it normally is speech and language therapists from the local hospital bring a people who have had a stroke, and have problems with their speech to us because on the NHS they only get six weeks help. And so they have got difficulty with speaking, and therefore huge problems socialising.  Normally socially, people will not have the patience to sit with them, and wait until they say a sentence. When they come to our group, we understand where they’re coming from, and we know we have been trained how to to handle their speech problems and they have a wonderful time. So they socialise, they smile, we get to know them and manage to converse with them. Sometimes help with drawing, or writing, or showing pictures, or whatever way. And they have a wonderful social time. They actually have got so friendly that during the weeks when we are not in the church hall,  the other week on the same day they meet in a cafe in a local town called Bromley. And so actually they meet weekly now, and us volunteers go to the cafe as well. And it is very, very important for those people and for their partners, and their children who sometimes bring them to the group and we can see the smile on their faces.

Interviewer

It sounds fantastic, but hard work, you know, you can’t underestimate the amount of time it must have taken you over the years to support that. What’s kept you going? What’s kept you doing It?

Julie Cook

Because I could see how much it has done for those people who were coming. The members of the aphasia group, of course change, and new ones come, or some unfortunately pass away, or move away, or not able to come anymore. So of course one wants to help the new ones, and one has learned how much it means to those people, and it becomes their social life. And actually during Covid years, I was in charge, and we couldn’t meet, but I definitely phoned them. Phoning is not easy to people who have got aphasia, but we still phoned every week. And so all those times it was essential, and it kept them going.

Interviewer

Fantastic. Now Peter, I want you. You were plucked to greatness, and became chair of Aphasia Re-Connect. Can you tell me a bit about why you agreed to do it?

Peter Cook

Yes, certainly. I think I always have enjoyed a challenge in life, and as it happened I was introduced to Aphasia Re-Connect by Julie, my wife. And as it happened, she mentioned that the person that she’d worked the Bromley group with passed on. And that’s when I came in. But also the Aphasia Re-Connect had financial problems, and in actual fact it had been run running under a different name for almost 20 years. And in actual fact it actually went bust. So I was,  had got a potential challenge to move this charity, which had been helped to get to the point when I was approached. And it was a challenge that I was very happy to undertake. I mean, having run my own business for 10 years and having sold it only a a few years earlier, I was very keen sort of to use my expertise if I could, to help somebody else in something else.

Peter Cook

Of course, as a, if you’re a businessman, you you are looking to raise money most, most of the time and have fair number of connections. And also my involvement with the livery companies had given me the opportunity of connections that could be useful. Therefore here is an opportunity to use my expertise that,  I’ve sold my business so I have got time, and when I experienced, and obviously the person that Julie spoke earlier about who’d had a stroke, aphasia and recovered, I was introduced to people that the likes of which I had never really seen before. And seeing them, and seeing what one could do to help them, is just something that was rewarding. One was pleased to do it, and one got a lot out of it. And fortunately, when you looked at the people you were helping, you realised, so did they. That was something that says, “well keep going”. So I decided to do it. But on a limited, as I was approaching 80, I decided that I would do it for three years, and then I would wish to step back and have got it to a stage where it could run without the likes of me. So hopefully that’s answered.

Interviewer

It’s fantastic. Now, could I ask both separately, do you have a favourite memory? And it could be with Aphasia, or it could be from another volunteering experience. But do you have a favourite memory of volunteering? Something which really resonates with you, as making it really a great thing to do?

Julie Cook

It’s one person who comes to our group. It’s a man who had a massive stroke, which has caused his aphasia. He can hardly speak. And he was in his early fifties, with a teenage child, and it was his mother who brought him in. He was in a wheelchair. His mother managed to bring him with wheelchair to the aphasia group. Now that is one person that is the only sociable thing he ever did during a week. And so I distinctly remember him, his face when he came in and we all said hello to him, and he was just so happy, and what he did for his mother, not mentioning his wife.

Peter Cook

Yes, I think if I were to give you an example, Julie mentioned somebody who’d had the stroke, and the effect to see a person who for weeks could not utter a single word, who is then suddenly not only talking, but organising, and helping to organise the charity that one is involved with. It almost is miraculous. And someone who, in actual fact who has sadly passed away now, but lived for something like six years beyond that, which he was advised was going to happen. And you know, in a way, the fact that we were there, just playing a little part, looking back on it, is incredibly rewarding.

Interviewer

Thank you. Now when you knew I was going to be appearing today, is there anything that either of you wanted to tell me, that you haven’t had the chance to say yet?

Peter Cook

I challenged the captain of the golf club to a two mile putting competition, where you simply have three putting holes. One was 10 yards, one was 20 yards and one was 30 yards and you had to do it so many times to come up to two miles. And we got club individuals, we told them all about it, we held it on the practice putting green, and we raised about just under 10,000 pounds on a Saturday afternoon.

Interviewer

Fantastic.

Peter Cook

In a few hours. So, and it was only really possible because all the grandchildren promised to take the ball out of the hole every time.. We didn’t have to bend down <laugh>.

Interviewer

So could I say thank you both very much. It’s been fantastic talking to you. I think from my point of view, you are a really great example of a couple who’ve worked hard, and run business, and done all of that. But alongside that have contributed to your local community in lots of different ways. But you’ve used your skills in life, so thank you ever so much for your time.