Fun day remembers Kieran, Connan and Phil

Three young people from Stone who tragically lost their lives this year were remembered at a family fun day at Stone Cricket Club on Sunday (21st September).

The day was the finale of the huge fundraising effort to raise money for epilepsy charity Gemma’s Ray of Hope in memory of Kieran ‘Lally’ McColl, but the day was also about remembering Connan McCleod and Phil ‘Skinny’ James too.

Over £3,000 was raised on the day for Gemma’s Ray of Hope, pushing the total to over an amazing £15,000.

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There are lots of photos from the day in this slideshow. If you can’t see it in your browser, please just click HERE

Fundraising organiser Sharon Turner explains more about the campaign and the family fun day…

Kieran Harley McColl was born on 4th July 1992. He was more commonly known as ‘Lally’ to all his friends and family. He was given this nickname at the age of 5 after a dinner lady called him ‘doo lally’, and it stuck . He grew up with the love of boxing . His career choices earlier in life were to either be a professional boxer or to join the RAF.

At a tender age of just 13 years Kieran started with epilepsy. Sadly this had a massive impact on his life, coping with different kinds of situations and hurdles along the way. This effected his driving, choice of career and other situations. This meant he could not follow either of his dream careers.

As this had such an impact on his life, kieran wanted to help raise awareness and educate people. Back in 2012 he wanted to organise a fund raising day to help raise much needed funds for our local epilepsy support group charity ‘Gemma’s ray of hope’. As he needed time and commitment from others we discussed this and decided to hold it in 2014.

Sadly on Thursday 8th May 2014 Kieran lost his life.

After deciding to make his way home along the canal tow path,leaving his friends wake, Kieran had an epileptic fit, fell into the canal and drowned.

As you can imagine this totally devastated his family and friends.

Now as a family we wanted to fulfil Kieran’s wish and to raise £10,000 for Gemma’s ray of hope.

We set up an event page on facebook titled Lally’s charity fundraising events, Invited a few friends to join the page and watched it grow. We had volunteers to hold different sponsored events from the three peaks challenge to bungee jumping and much, much more.

We have organised a five a side football tournament which hosted 16 teams, a car wash, a ladies night, a 24 hour tennisathon, and a family fun day. We also have our own charity wrist bands with our fund raising logo #Lol4Lally in printed on them. We have had support from other businesses too which have held various things to raise us money.

The response and support we have had has been truly amazing and So over whelming. The love and support our lovely town has shown us has been totally incredible and as a family we cant thank you enough. We really are amazed!

With a bit of work and support we have now managed to raise just over £15,000 for Lallys chosen charity so far, and there is still more to come in!

The fund raising didnt stop there though. With in a few days we managed to raise £2500 for a bench too which has been placed along the canal tow path. This has given us so much comfort. We now have somewhere to reflect our thoughts and memories.

To top everything off we have been donated a signed stoke city football shirt which has the names of Connan, Lally and Skinny printed on them. Rather than try to auction this off we have decided to get this framed and hang it in the Red Lion pub where all the youngsters used to go and drink so that we can share this tribute with all their friends.

It has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride for us all but this small town has shown so much compassion and we will never forget it.

Thank you!! X