A Kent mum has dedicated the last five years to raising money for The Fire Fighters Charity in her husband’s memory, after he died suddenly while at work.
Nikki Haxton-Jones’ firefighter husband, Danny, passed away in July 2017, despite his colleagues’ courageous attempts to save him with CPR. They later discovered he’d unknowingly had pneumonia in both of his lungs at the time.
Danny was a firefighter with London Fire Brigade and had taken part in fundraising events for the Charity throughout his career. Now Nikki, who has since begun working in Control for Kent Fire and Rescue Service herself, says she wants to continue that legacy and support the Charity that’s there for her, her family and Danny’s former colleagues.
The Fire Fighters Charity offers health and wellbeing support to the whole of the UK fire services community, as well as spouses, partners and dependants. And that support lasts a lifetime.
She says: ‘Danny passed away in July 2017. He was on station and collapsed suddenly. Unfortunately, he was behind a locked door at the time, getting changed, so he wasn’t found straight away. It was just really unfortunate timing.’
Nikki was suddenly faced not only with a future without her husband, but with dealing with her own grief as well as the challenge of single-handedly caring for her two children, Olivia, 15, and Harry, 12.
She has since made it her mission to organise and take part in fundraisers with her kids, her own colleagues and Danny’s former colleagues, including abseils, runs, bucket collections, sports matches and many more. She’s donated an incredible £7,698 altogether in under five years, which is still rising.
Nikki adds: ‘Danny was a positive person so we really didn’t want it to be all negative at the time.
‘The lads on station did a Ladder Climb literally two or three weeks after, then we did the Vitality 10k, a charity cricket match, the Great North Run – it went on from there. The kids, especially with the cricket, were able to play with friends during a lot of the events and, importantly, talk about their dad. It’s giving them that excuse to talk about him.’
The family recently did a bucket collection at the Wrexham vs Altrincham match on 18 April – raising an amazing £836 on the day alone – before Nikki joined colleagues to complete a sponsored abseil on 28 April, raising over £1,400, to be split between the Charity and the family of a fellow Kent firefighter.
You can read Nikki’s full story here.
