Thanks for visiting our fund raising page.  Christa and I will both be running the London Marathon on Sunday, 26th April, to support our favourite charity, the Children’s Trust, where our son Justin spent the last two years of his life.

A brief history of Justin
Our son Justin was born in Chicago on 10th September, 2002; he was born with total renal failure, i.e. neither of his kidneys worked.  When he was 3 months old we returned to the UK and, after being in Great Ormond Street Hospital for 6 months, Justin finally came home for the first time in June 2003.  He was on a dialysis machine and we trained to care for him ourselves at home.  We then moved to Los Angeles in February, 2004, where Tim was able to donate one of his kidneys to Justin in December that year.  We had hoped Justin would then be able to lead a relatively normal life.  Sadly in March 2005 Justin had a seizure and multiple complications resulted.  He would remain in UCLA hospital in Los Angeles until September when we had him transferred by air ambulance back to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.  It soon became clear that Justin would never fully recover from the incident at UCLA and he wasn’t going to be with us for very long.

The Children’s Trust [www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk]
In June 2006 Justin was accepted into the Children’s Trust in Tadworth, Surrey, and was transferred there from Great Ormond Street Hospital.  We bought a house about a mile down the road from the Trust.  We saw miraculous improvements in Justin’s speech, his mobility and most importantly his overall well being and love of life.  This picture of Justin with Tim, Christa, sister Jessica and brother Connor was taken on 10th September, 2007; the Children’s Trust threw a big birthday party for him, it was to be his last.  Justin fell very ill in March 2008 and passed away peacefully at home on 7th April, 2008.

What made Justin so special and such an inspiration to those that knew him, was that even though he endured unimaginable suffering, he tried to live life to the full and always had a smile and a joke for those around him; his cheekiness was legendary at the Children’s Trust.

The London Marathon
A few months before Justin died Christa asked him if he could pick one thing he would like to do what would that be?  His answer was that he would love to be able to run.  So there was never any doubt that we would run the marathon for the Trust; Justin would have liked that, not only because he would have loved to have been able to run himself, but because we are running for the Trust, where he was most happy.  Others who knew Justin or have been touched by his story asked if they could run with us, so we set up Team Justin, made up of 20 runners all running in his memory.

Thank you all for your support over the years.  We do hope you’ll be able to make a small donation to this very special place.

With love to you all,

Tim, Christa, Jessica and Connor

PS Anything over £3,000 will still go to the Children's Trust but for a later event.  Tim will be going on a sponsored bicycle ride (maybe London to Paris) and Christa will be running a half-marathon in October.