Child of My Love

This book is the record of the life and achievements of a remarkable woman: Baroness Ryder of Warsaw CMG, OBE, better known to the many thousands of men, women and children whose lives she has touched simply as Sue Ryder.

Sue Ryder was born in 1923 into a large farm-owning family from Yorkshire. The course of her life was to be determined by two early influences: the example of her much-loved mother’s voluntary social work; and by what she herself witnessed of the widespread social misery caused by the Great Depression.

At the beginning of the war, Sue Ryder left school and volunteered to join the FANY. She then served with the highly secret Special Operations Executive, created by Winston Churchill to co-ordinate Resistance activities in German-occupied Europe. She was attached to the Polish Section of SOE and what she witnessed from that time to the end of the war – especially the selfless, cheerful courage of men embarking on the most hazardous operations – left her not only with a passionate, enduring love of the Polish people and their country, but also with a determination to help relieve the terrible suffering of a devastated continent.

In 1953, as the scope of her work expanded, she formed the Sue Ryder Foundation the more effectively to provide Homes and domiciliary care teams for the sick and disabled in any part of the world where there was a clear need and where the opportunity presented itself. Since that time, the Foundation has grown steadily in size and in the scope of the help it offers to people in need.

Sue Ryder always intended that the Foundation should be a “living memorial to the victims and opponents of tyranny and to those who suffer and die as a result of persecution”. Today it is certainly that; but it is also, in its own, unique way, a splendid testimony to the compassion, the indomitable resolve and – most of all – to the deep Christian faith of its Founder.

In 1959, Sue Ryder married Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC, OM, DSO, DFC, one of Britain’s best-known war heroes and himself the founder and inspiration of a great international Foundation of Homes for the disabled. They live in a small flat within the headquarters of the Sue Ryder Foundation in Suffolk and share the life of the community of the Home, which is part of the same building.