A MUCH-LOVED community champion from Gourock is set to celebrate her milestone 90th birthday.

Nell McFadden MBE, who has dedicated almost 30 years campaigning for elderly people’s rights, will mark the occasion with family and friends on Sunday.

The senior citizen is having dinner with her sons and daughter, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and nieces and nephews.

She said: “I can’t believe that I’m going to be 90.

“I just wanted to live long enough to see my family grow up.”

But Sunday’s happy occasion is something Nell’s loved ones feared they might not see.

Three years ago she was struck down with a life-threatening condition and medics had to race against the clock to diagnose and treat the illness.

Thankfully Nell survived but the scare has forced her to slow down, and a fall in November and a chest infection which resulted in a hospital stay at Christmas have also set her back.

But Nell, who was chair of Your Voice for more than 20 years and is still honorary president, is counting her blessings and looking forward to her family get-together.

She said: “I’ve been so lucky because I have so many nice friends and so many people know me, even, if I don’t know them.

“One man came up to me and said, ‘you’re Nell McFadden, I want to thank-you for all you’ve done for older people’.

“In Morrisons, someone came up to me and handed me a bunch of flowers. I’ve had a lovely time — it’s been a magical journey.”

That journey started when Nell was a young mum struggling with depression.

But a trip to the GP and a notice in the Telegraph sparked her interest in doing something for the community.

She said: “I was just an ordinary wee woman, I’d got married and had children.

“I started to take depression. I went to the doctor and started crying my eyes out and asked him to help me.

“He told me ‘I’ll give you a tablet to tide you over but I want you to go out and join the community to the best of your ability’.

“That was a word that was never spoken in those days.”

She started volunteering two days a week in the Oxfam Shop in Hamilton Way, then she saw a snippet in the Tele about a conference to set up a group for older people.

She went along and afterwards they were looking for committee members to set up the forum.

Nell said: “I still had depression and I thought I’d try being the vice-chair but then two weeks later the chair didn’t turn up and I had to do it.

“We were all still finding our feet but then the chairman never came back as his wife took ill.

“I’ve been chair for 27 years and my depression gradually went away. I was always been asked to join other groups, I was a member of 16 at one time.

“The more I became involved the more I wanted to do. I’ve been to conferences all over Britain and visited places I never thought I would have been, No.10 Downing Street, the House of Commons, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Palace."

The great-grandmother sadly lost her eldest son John, two years ago, but John’s late partner’s family will be at the party along with the rest of the family.

This includes her son Colin and his wife Debbie, daughter Janice and her son Robert and his wife Margaret.
She has four grandchildren, Joanna, Stephen, Karen and David.

Joanna, Stephen and his wife Jenny will be coming along, and will be joined by six of her eleven great-grandchildren.

They’ll be joined by Nell’s nieces and nephews Alec and Ann-Margaret Lawson, Marie and Norrie McKillop, Ruby and Bill Gray and Agnes Borland.

Nell would like to thank her friends at the Elderly Forum, especially secretary Margaret Tate, Your Voice and all her carers.