Kate’s story

Find out how we supported Kate and her father, Ron.

In the last few months of Ron Montgomery’s life, his daughters would joke about the number of friends who kept wanting to visit him.

“We’d say to him, ‘have you kept all of these friends hidden away?’,” laughs Kate Dormer.

When he became ill in 2015, Ron moved to Orpington to be closer to Kate and the family and St Christopher’s became his local hospice offering care and support for them all. Though his family visited the hospice, Ron’s wish was to stay at home — a desire the hospice was able to make happen by supporting his family.

“If we could have hand-picked the team, we couldn’t have picked better people. Not only were they good with my dad but they were good with us as a family,” says Kate. “We wouldn’t have known what he was entitled to or where to get access to carers, equipment and these sorts of things. Everything was completed by St Christopher’s and kind of fell into place,” she continues. “It’s not until you look back and think it just kind of happened seamlessly because they just did everything.”

“They always had the right answers for difficult questions.”

“I particularly remember that the St Christopher’s team who came out to us on a regular basis always seemed to know the right thing to say,” she adds. “They always had the right answers for difficult questions.”

Since Ron’s death, Kate’s family have supported St Christopher’s in a number of ways, including a skydive fundraiser and volunteering in our shops.

“What comes to mind now,” she says, “is that when we needed them, they were there. But without those funds and support, we’d have been in a sad place if they couldn’t be there for us.”

That is why, this May, Kate is urging people to take on our Bluebell Walk to make sure we can still be there for people in the future.

“Bring the dog and the kids and make it a day out. Make it a social also but ultimately walk,” she says. “Walk in memory of someone or as a celebration of life, maybe walk and talk about your loved one.

Give back for all of the help that St Christopher’s have given us, and you’re also investing for the future for other people that you know or love.”

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