Captain Sir Tom Moore's family say he is 'back home' after his ashes were buried in Yorkshire
Speaking after burying her father’s ashes in his family grave in Keighley his daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore said his family could move on to the “next stage”, knowing he was safe in his home town.
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Hide AdShe said: “He became a beacon of hope to the world, and he crossed the boundaries of gender, race, nationality, social status and age. Not many people have done that.
“So, we guard the legacy with our lives, but we share it willingly with the world. We feel that we are the guardians of his legacy. We can’t rest from that. The legacy is for everybody and it’s up to us to ensure that it lives on.
“For me, personally, it’s about leaving him somewhere I know that he will be looked after, in the place that he would be really happy. That’s not the end. That’s the final resting place for him and I can genuinely rest easy feeling that he’s here. This is just the next stage for us.”
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Hide AdMrs Ingram-Moore said the £38.9 million that, with Gift Aid, Sir Tom raised before his 100th birthday with his walks around his garden has already gone to NHS charities.
That total was raised with donations from 1.6 million people in 163 countries, she said.
She said the Captain Tom Foundation, set up by the family, is determined to continue what he began and has started from scratch in terms of money in the pot.
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Hide AdBut she said the Captain Tom 100 event earlier this year to celebrate his 101st birthday had a social media reach of billions of people, showing his continuing influence.
Mrs Ingram-Moore said: “It’s not all about the money, it’s about that legacy. How we can bring our voice and our platform, that’s where the legacy is. What we have is this incredible global convening power that is my father’s legacy.
“He showed the power of connecting generations and to ensure that, as we have this aging population, we use the voice of that aging population and we ensure that that aging population has a voice.
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Hide Ad“I think we showed the world that this person that moved in with us at 87, he was given purpose and joy, he was needed every single day.
“If we can just give a bit of that back out to society, then I think we’ll feel that were securing his legacy.”
Mrs Ingram-Moore said the family felt it was important to include the whole world in her father’s funeral in February but Monday’s ceremony should be more low-key.
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Hide AdShe said: “We felt it was absolutely right that, on the day that he was cremated, the whole country should feel part of that. Although everyone recognised it was our immediate loss, it was the country’s loss too. Not only that, a loss for people around the world.
“The world was watching that day and we wanted to make sure that the world felt that they were in the back rows of the pews of that crematorium. Today was a much more simple, low-key affair. Not because we were hiding from anyone, but because it was just that final journey to bring him home to the place where he came from.”
But Mrs Ingram-Moore said it was important to have the honour guard of organisations her father believed in.
“It was joy and a delight to talk to every one of them,” she said. “I wished we had had longer. It really gave us that feeling of total connection.”
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