#15105, Francelle Bradford WHITE

Andrée’s daughter, Francelle was inspired by her mother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s to extend her already substantial fundraising efforts. She had previously raised funds for Infant Deaths (now the Lullaby Trust), Whizz-Kidz, and the British Red Cross as well as volunteering with the British criminal justice system and being appointed by the Home Office to the Independent Monitoring Board at one of the UK’s largest prisons.

Following her mother’s diagnosis, she set up the Andrée Griotteray White Charitable Trust to raise money for research into Alzheimer’s and other forma of dementia and wrote the book Andrée’s War, How One Young Woman Outwitted the Nazis based on her mother’s diaries. All net income from the book and from Francelle’s speaker fees go straight to the charity.

On being awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List she said “It feels quite fitting that this honour has been awarded at the start of the year that would have marked my mother’s 100th birthday and I am proud to have used her amazing war time story to raise money to fight a very cruel disease.”

Francelle has been a director of Gander & White, a fine art storage and transport company, since the early 1970s, joining the company founded by her father in 1933 and run from the mid 60s by her mother until Patrick White, Francelle's brother took up the reins.